Instead, I spent the whole weekend with my families. Michael’s family and my family all came to our house yesterday for Easter! It’s the funniest thing when both of our families are together at our house because our living room is SO SMALL! My sister and dad were laying on the floor, we had to bring in extra chairs from the kitchen and we squeezed four people on our little couch! Instead of calling our house “small”…. we prefer the term “Cozy”.  And that’s exactly how we felt yesterday…. we felt close and “cozy”. It was wonderful.

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Good Things

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1. Easter: So let me start this GoodThings post with the most important “Good Thing”…. and that would be Easter.  When I was younger, Easter meant getting up early for the sunrise service at church, eating donuts afterwards and then going home to put on my new Easter Dress. I’m ashamed to say that I STILL get excited about buying Easter dresses. I feel like it’s a GREAT excuse to go to Target! However, as I’ve grown up….I am becoming more and more aware of the significance of Easter. Yes, we all know that Jesus died on the cross for us. He took on the sins of the WORLD in order to make a way for us to connect with the Father….. but when you hear this over and over again for 20 years, sometimes you lose sight of the magnitude of this sacrifice. I’ll admit that that happened to me. It happens a lot. I am constantly forgetting how amazing my God is and CONSTANTLY putting Him on the back burner of my life.  I become consumed with stupid, meaningless, WORDLY things…. like blog stats and new shoes and teal jewelry and making my house look PERFECT… and being the BEST photographer.  REALLY?! Is that really what life is about? God does not care at ALL if I can shoot with my 85 at 1.2!  He doesn’t care what is included in my packages or how many people “Like” my facebook fanpage. Oh Lord help me if I EVER start to think that my purpose in life is my BUSINESS!! All of this can be taken away in a split second.  Gone. My passion for photography can disappear in an instant….and if that happened…would I have lost my purpose in life? What would I live for? Would I just live for my husband? But people let me down constantly…..friends, family, my spouse… they will all fail me at some point in my life. So if everything is temporary….what am I living for? ….. The answer is Christ. I live for Him and I live to share him with others so that they might understand what it feels like to have true PURPOSE in their life.  We all have days every now and then when we feel EMPTY… but if your life is in a constant state of emptiness and disappointment… it could be that you’re putting all of your hope and trust in things that will never satisfy you. NEVER. I could be charging $15,000 per wedding one day and I would still feel empty if I didn’t know the Lord.  One day I hope to have a cute little family…beautiful children and a cute fluffy dog…. and my life would still feel incomplete without Christ. One day I hope to have a living room big enough to hold more than 5 people comfortably…. but even when we make our house upgrade one day…. we will NEVER be satisfied in life if we don’t have a purpose.

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I said before that the story of Easter can sometimes seem mundane to Christians when you have heard it so many times…..but the beauty of Easter is that it’s all about GRACE and I’m so thankful that even when I lose sight of how powerful the cross is, GRACE is still available to me.  Christ died for EVERYONE….absolutely everyone and if you have never heard this before or maybe this is the first time it’s made sense to you… or maybe it doesn’t make sense at all!….Either way, email me or find a local church where you can find answers and other people who are in your shoes. I’m serious!  Do it! I’m so sorry to keep rambling and I know that not everyone is going to agree with this post… but here’s the thing…. Christians are criticized for being hypocrites.  This is no surprise because we’re humans and humans screw up all the time. However….. I would be a hypocrite if I NEVER spoke about my faith. I would be a hypocrite if I let fear of rejection keep me from blogging about my purpose in life. So here it is…. this is what I life for! Take it or leave it…….but I’m hoping all of you take it… because living a life for Christ sets you free… and freedom in the Lord is a GoodThing:).

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And just because it’s Easter… I have to show some family pics! Happy Birthday Bobbi!! (Michael’s Mom celebrated her Birthday yesterday and we ate at Maggiano’s! ohh lala! It was gooood!)

2. Picasso and Surprises: Ok wow… so ummm that first one went a little longer than I had anticipated.  Here is the second GoodThing….. 2. Surprizes and Picasso!  This past Saturday Michael had put “Surprise” on the calendar. I got up, got ready and we started driving. I’m so easy to surprise. I don’t try to guess the surprise beforehand, that takes too much thinking. I just let the surprise happen.  So Michael headed to downtown Richmond and we pulled into the Virginia Fine Arts Museum and I immediately knew what was going on. Michael had bought us tickets to see the Picasso exhibit. This exhibit is only being shown at two locations in the US. How Richmond become one of the locations, I have NO CLUE! But we wanted to see it while it was still here on the east coast! Picasso was weird but lunch was wonderful and to top off our nice morning together…. we drove around and found some MASSIVE homes on the river. That is by far one of favorite things to do.  We love driving and looking at houses!!! That day ended with an evening with my family back home in Caroline. We fixed dinner, watched Harry Potter (right before Easter? Really?) and momma gave me a pedicure. It was a WONDERFUL day off!!!!!!!

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3. Cookout: The LAST GoodThing for this post would have to be COOKOUT. Have you ever eaten there?! OMG. It’s so greasy but SO good! I was  hanging out with a friend and we randomly got COOKOUT on our way home and I was so impressed. There were police directing the traffic around the building because so many people were trying to get their burger and milkshake! One taste of my milkshake and I knew this needed to make a GoodThings post!! I probably gained 5 pounds from that meal but that’s ok… it was WORTH IT!

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