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Birthdays Hope Life and Love

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August 4, 2017

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Hi there! Welcome to the Fully Alive Photography blog, a journal about our clients, shoots, and my own personal life. Stay a while and say hello!

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Birthdays Hope Life and Love

Today is my birthday!

I rarely write about myself, but I am a BIG fan of birthdays, and myself, so I am feeling entitled to say hello and happy birthday to me:) 

I love birthdays so much I celebrate birthday month, birthday week, birthday weekend, and birthday. lol. My kid is spoiled.

I started celebrating myself and my life on the 1st of August and will end it with our 10 year anniversary on the 31st. BEST.MONTH.EVER.

Today and this weekend, I will treat myself to some yoga, meditation/prayer, lunch with a friend, dinner with my family, followed up by my favorites games with friends, and then a good book.  It will begin with wheat for sheep and end with some major potions and curses, with a little sushi in between. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out Dominion, Settlers of Catan, and Sushi go!


What is noteworthy about me?

I struggle with fear, as does most of humanity, if we are honest with ourselves. Sometimes it is overwhelming. This year I am focused on being free from fear, accepting myself, and speaking truth into my mind, rather than believing lies that the world feeds me. I am renewing my mind with starting with these neuropathways then hopefully branching into growing in more areas.

I will share some of those truths with you today! These true things about who I am and what makes me come alive.


  • Like wine, I have become a better with age, I am sweeter, smarter, stronger, and lovelier inside and out! I am not afraid of age, I welcome it with the wisdom it brings. Today I am 36!

 

  • I am a good mom of a precious 5 year old boy who is all things beautiful and heart crushingly wonderful. Don’t get me wrong, he is also challenging and this type of love would destroy me if I didn’t have a massive amount of trust that the God I love cares for him more than I do. But daily I have to fight to believe that. I care enough about parenting that I am engaged. I fight myself to be patient and kind. To be firm and disciplined. always say I’m sorry when I mess up. breathe in patience, and breath out presence!

 

  • As a wife to an amazing man who rages against the injustices of life with me and goes on outlandish adventures with me, we have learned to keep our spirits alive, and keep me sane in the process! We are super nerdy together, about harry potter and superheros. We and are planning matching lightning bolt tattoos for our 10 year anniversary right after we go to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter world all day kid free. He is a dreamer, we dream together. He makes me laugh, is full of life and my best friend still through all the storms that come with marriage and parenting and moving across the country.

There is more…

  • I am a fighter.
  • an encourager.
  • loyal.
  • vulnerable and raw, and real. I am a truth teller to myself and others.
  • driven, when I am centered and at my best I am one of the most determined people I know.
  • I love
  • dancing
  • singing
  • playing the ukulele
  • Taylor Swift and Dolly Parton
  • reading fiction. Especially children or young adult fiction. SERIOUSLY love the stuff.
  • watching shows and reading with my hubby every night. It’s our daily adventure to other realms.
  • I am only silly past 10pm however I usually fall asleep around 9…

And a little more

  • I am a motivated entrepreneur and I’m passionate about photography and small business. You might have read the about me page or the recent celebration post I did for my 10-year photography celebration but if you haven’t you should!  I worked very hard to get where I am and I plan to keep working harder.

 

  • I am passionate about community. We were not meant to be alone. I am not talking about alone time for restoration, I am speaking of true loneliness. The kind that rots the soul. Often I find myself wishing I lived in a village and life was the way it was long ago, fully emerged in a community and helping one another daily, without that there was no survival. I don’t like the loneliness our culture has created. I want to vanquish it!

Mostly, I am passionate about my faith and knowing God and thus becoming a better, stronger, more confident, and life giving person.

Although I often fall short of my goals in this area. It’s the hardest for me to grasp because it’s not tangible. It’s not something I can check off a list.(I love lists)

I’m discovering that a portion of the faith I have learned to believe without too much question, was fed to me from a place oppression and control, not a message of freedom. A lot of the churches I attended might have meant well but were so off in many ways.

I am learning to read the bible and understand God in a new way. As such, I am not interested in an oppressive gospel but rather the message Jesus brought TO the oppressed. This is a message of freedom, renewing of the mind, hope, and most of all, love.

With God as my friend, what can I lose? I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.” Romans 8:38-39

This tells me that whatever life throws my way, I can endure it because I am not alone.

I have the most powerful being, the creator of the universe on my side, with me, behind me, encouraging me, keeping me upright! Though my fears may be real, the brokenness of this life is not my end or my purpose. I believe life after this life will still come, our wholeness will be restored, it is coming and it is real-this helps me through.

Love will win!  Wars, famine, sickness, death, it will all end. Grieve and pain though they make us stronger now, one day will be vanquished! Here is my hope and my resting place.

Something my pastor Gayle recently said when teaching from Ecclesiastes, really stuck with me and spoke right into my battle and I’m sure many of yours.

“Fear God and hold him in awe and honor and reverence. This is the sum total of life. Life is unstable. It’s random and it can be horrible. He one constant thing is the revealed will of God for the world. Never changing. Never unstable.

Everything matters. Because it’s forming you.

Remember your creator. Pray. You are laying the foundation for things you will live with and the ones you raise for years to come. Don’t delay. Don’t put it off. When you are old you will have developed this deep trusting providing friendship. You’ll have a list of things to be thankful for every morning because you have learned to live in joy. Move away from anxiety with gratefulness.

Gratefulness is not ignoring the brokenness around us, but rather the ability to see BEYOND it!”

This amazing right? Because all this effort put into choosing joy, love, and gratefulness, fighting again fear and anxiety, pushing myself to be more patient and kind and outward focused, to be a better parent, wife, friend… it’s ALL with purpose driven.

I have drive to enjoy God and all the beauty this life offers, to be fully alive and fully present now, to focus on all the goodness and joy I see, all the hope I feel, all the love I have to give. To battle anxiety and fear with gratefulness and the renewing of my mind with constant truth, confidence, and bravery and to trust that I am not alone in this journey.

This is my message of hope. What is yours?

 

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I'm Tracy and I'm so happy you're here. This blog a journal about our clients, shoots and my own personal life! Stay awhile, leave a comment, or say hi!

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