Excuse me for a moment while I mourn the loss of innocence in our world

There are days when I am so accosted visually and audibly by vulgarity that I get close to crying for the children that I don't even have yet.

There is so much ugliness in the world and I get so scared about the idea of bringing children into it.  It hurts just thinking that someday I will have to stop protecting them and that their poor eyes and ears will be exposed to horrible degrading things.

I don't even have kids yet and I'm already mourning the loss of their innocence.

We are aliens and strangers.  We are sojourners.  We are only passing through.  This is not our home and I praise the Lord for it.

Don't worry.  Happy-Esther-Who-Finds-Beauty-In-Everything will be back in a few hours.

Edit:  Look what I just found!
Isaiah 54:13  "All your children shall be taught by the LORD, and great shall be the peace of your children."
What a promise.  Our God is good!

Can You Handle Another Work Story?

Well, sorry if you can't, because you're getting one anyway. I crack myself up pretty regularly, I'm afraid.
I hope I'm not the only one who finds these little anecdotes hilarious.

So, today, shortly after I got back from a long lunch break/coffee date with a lovely friend, a man walked into the office and wanted to talk about things I knew about.  This made me happy because sometimes people want to talk about things I don't know about.

After we finished with our little talk, he offered his hand to shake and, at the same time said his name.
Without even processing what he had just said, I shook his hand and replied with "Good Luck" . . . a totally appropriate thing to say after the conversation we'd just had, but not at all an appropriate response to him telling me his name.

I mean, it sounds like I just said "Good Luck with a name like that."
For the record, I never even fully processed the man's name.
Way to be unprofessional and maybe rude, Esther.

But, in the end, I just had to laugh at myself and he probably laughed at me too.
So we were both amused.

Moments

I love moments.
I mean, I love God and people and animals and, well, life.

But moments, moments are really special.  You know what I mean by moments, right?  Those little points on your journey when you just stop and say, for who-knows-what reason, "Whoa!" maybe silently or maybe aloud.
Maybe it's a smell, a sight, a sound, a feeling, or a thought.  You may not even know what it is, but it's just beautiful.

That's why I'm a writer and a photographer.  I want to catch all the moments in my life.
Sometimes I succeed, and sometimes I don't.

And sometimes I can't.
I'm learning to accept those times when I can't catch something.

A few weeks ago, I had one of those moments and I wanted to catch it.  I wanted to catch it so bad.  I tried to make an essay out of it, but I just said too much.  I covered it up with my finite words.
I tried to make a poem out of it, but I couldn't say enough.  I tried to make another poem out of it.
I tried to make another poem out of it.
But it was something secret and sacred.  Something too sacred for human language.
And it hasn't died.  It's stayed with me despite the fact that I can't contain it in any of my usual cages.

Ever since I got my first camera at twelve, maybe even eleven, I've been taking pictures.  It's crazy, the number of pictures I have stored up, whether in print from that old film camera, or on memory cards that pop up in the weirdest places in my house.
I compulsively take pictures.  In high school I was so bad about it that if I went anywhere without my camera, the good time was ruined for me a little bit.  Ha.  Let's not shield you from the truth.  I'm still that way.

No.  Really.  I'm serious.

But now I'm learning that there are times when you can't capture the moment, so you savor it while it's there and let it slip away in the natural course of things, knowing another will come.

Last night I was driving home around eleven and I caught a glimpse of the moon.  The moon in a gown of Spanish Lace* with a glass slipper named Jupiter peeking out from under the hem.
I raced down my road at forty miles an hour, breakneck speed for that terrain, (refer to the last picture in this post if you don't believe me) hoping against hope that the clouds would stay put.
They did stay put, but there was no way I could capture the fullness of what I saw, even with the widest of wide-angle lenses.

This morning I was walking across campus to work.  I was a little late, so the 8:00 rush of students trying to get to class was over and I was practically by myself.  There was a slight nip in the air and people hadn't yet had time to drop skittles wrappers or Sprite bottles or popcorn bags on the steps to my building.  The only sound was the clip clip clip of a woman's heels as she crossed the paved "courtyard."
My first thought was "I wish I had my camera."
But what would I have taken a picture of?  You couldn't have seen the cold air in the picture.
My words right now can't convey to you the lovely sterility of the early morning quiet.  The hush after the first storm of students.

And I knew that.
I knew it as I stood still and listened and breathed deep and smiled like a fool at nothing in particular and just absorbed without scrambling to save anything.

*Don't you love that phrase "a gown of Spanish Lace?"  So do I.  I wish I could say I came up with it on my own.  But I didn't.  It was Janette Oke's first.  It's the title of a book I've never read.

A Funny Thing Happened Just Now

One of the Blogs that I like to read regularly is written by a girl in the Northwest.
Today she said something like Yes!  Summer has finally arrived! and posted a picture of the thermometer saying 88 degrees.

Today I was rejoicing that fall had finally arrived because it was only around ninety outside and we can now actually eat hot lunches without feeling miserable.



Also?  We can actually go to the park and have a picnic without sweating.









Talk about an awesome afternoon!
Although the heat may or may not have made us decide on our next activity . . .







Props to you if you noticed the traffic cone on top of the Starbucks sign.
I didn't until I was reviewing the pictures.



Apparently it's a prank that's been there for months. Really? And I never noticed it?

Researching

The other day, little Hannah came up to me while I was cleaning up a Sunny-D spill and asked if I could make her some pretend doctor tools.  Rather than stop wiping up the sticky Sunny-D which was still running all over everything, I just said "Hmmm.  I'll have to do some research on that one."

Hannah promptly turned to her little friend Nick (who was standing right next to us) and said "Okay.  She said she'll do some research on it."  In a tone that said "We've definitely made some progress toward getting those doctor tools."
"Okay."
"Do you know what that means, Nick?"
"No"
"It means she's going to look it up on some websites."
"Okay"
*long pause*
"Do you know what that means, Nick?"

I would dearly love to know what "looking it up on some websites" means to her, but Nick apparently wasn't that interested and they moved on to something other than Doctor.

Looks like maybe I'll have to choose my words more carefully when I'm a mommy.

Instead of American Idol

A month ago, I was absolutely positive I would be auditioning for American Idol in Houston last week.

That didn't happen.  About the time I made my decision, my Grandmother had open-heart surgery and Mom went down to Houston to help with her recovery, so, instead of American Idol,

I stayed here to hang out with these hooligans


slash champion Twister players


slash ninjas


slash best friends.


I caked

The Inspiration


The Result


The Disaster


The Recovery



I hadn't done this in way too long.  It was a blast, and not only beautiful, but actually delicious (a result which I, sadly, do not always achieve).

And I did some serious soul-searching over a few incredibly full cups of coffee.



Yes, I may have been hanging out with tiny ones all the time, but, between that and getting back into the swing of things at school and work, I did have time for some serious thinking.
The fact is, I did want to audition for American Idol, but I didn't want to be on the show.

I was in search of affirmation, but I already have all the affirmation I need when these tiny ones reach out for me after a nap.
When they ask me to play games with them.
When they throw their arms around me just because I'm there.

Besides, do I really want to be in that world again?



I don't think so.
Just look at what it does to my hair!
All that to say, the past two weeks have contained some of my favorite days ever even if they weren't the days I was expecting.

I Took a Little Road Trip Last Week

(Yes, this road trip did coincide with the policeman encounter, and yes, I am just now posting pictures of it.  The road trip, not the encounter.)


Disclaimer:  Before anyone (i.e. Daddy) gets too upset, I'll have you know all pictures which look like they were taken on the road were taken on the road, but not with me looking through the viewfinder.  I just had the camera next to me and held it up when I saw something I wanted to take a picture of.

This one, in fact, was taken at a stop sign.  And maybe I did look through the viewfinder, just this once.



Really, I've got to get over this obsession with crooked pictures, but you have to admit, sometimes things just beg to be photographed from an angle, while some things need to be perfectly horizontal.



This is a road I travel quite frequently, because it takes me to one of my favorite places.

(You should totally click on that link, especially if you live in Texas.  I worked at that favorite place for three summers in a row and loved every minute of it.  While you're there, you should check out the photos from the summers of 2009 and 2010.  A lot of them are mine and I'm just a little bit proud of them.  Okay, end of shameless plug for self.)

This road also leads to one of my best friends, and, this summer, it lead to my sister and this lovely.
And when you're going to visit those three, it's almost a crime not to have a Sonic drink.


Sorry.  Private joke.

Have I mentioned that this is one of my favorite roads?  So wide open with nothing but the sky above you.  I tell you, it's fantastic when you're driving into the sunset.  I've had some pretty good times with Jesus on this road.


Don't worry, Daddy, the camera is zoomed all the way in, and I definitely had both hands on the wheel before that truck was even close to me.


But this summer hasn't been very kind to the fields round-about my road.  I saw lots like this.


Even that sky looks parched!

No.  That picture has not been edited at all.  That is really the color of the grass.  And my apologies for the slim amount of field you can actually see.  When you're just holding the camera up without looking through the viewfinder, these are the kind of things you get.

All in all, I was happy to finally make it to this



And, after a few fun days, to leave this



behind for this



and finally, this.



I do love home.