Beyond Blessed

I went to bed last night with a smile beaming on my face.  I was overflowing with such joy, I was afraid I might not be able to fall asleep.

And the truth is, my day was chaotic, sometimes stressful, and I was frazzled by late afternoon.  The kids were crabby, Brynn didn't nap well ~ which always throws a wrench in my day...

But I was still overjoyed by life.

My cousin, Lynn, posted this as her facebook status yesterday:

"God, I don't understand You at all somtimes.  But I keep coming back to the knowledge that You are trustworthy.  I lift this day up to you."

I can't even describe how true that rings for me.

(one of) my posts on facebook yesterday was:

"I don't believe in coincidences... I believe in God Winks..."

Also ringing true.

I have been so blessed, and so fortunate to have amazing people in my life.

It just seems like everything that has happened in the past 6-ish months has been an incredible God Wink ~ a way of God giving me a little nudge reminding me that he is guiding me along the way.  Even the not-so-good.  God has been there.  For example; my Dad has been in the hospital for the past week (just busted out yesterday).  It was an awful feeling knowing that's where he was, and I couldn't be there to support him.  But he was in the right place at the right time to get the answers he needed - and I am thankful.

Perhaps the next big thing to share is that I officially crossed over ~ not in a weird way.  I received my first print order from one of my senior photo sessions the other day and it just hit me.  Bam.  I'm really doing this - I'm really going into business.  And the questions started... am I ready? can I do this? what if I fail? what if I fail?

Bottom line for me is this, (trying not to get too deep, here) I really don't like to fail.  There.  I said it out loud.  But I read a quote recently that I can't remember who wrote, and I'm going to put it back into my own words because I can't remember it exactly...

Success is going from failure to failure without losing your passion.

{Updated:  "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm" ~ Winston Churchill}  (I was pretty close!!)


So true.

And really, I don't even know how I would define failure at this point, anyway.  All I know is that I am trusting God, that he is nudging me in the right direction, and regardless of what failure might mean... I'm going for it!

And I will leave you with this; a picture I took on Sunday driving home ~ I was seeing too much beauty on my drive home, and I just had to pull over and snap some pictures.  I was going to enter it into an amateur contest in our area, but I don't think I qualify anymore, and I think I'll take the trade off...