Shannon Holden Photography

Last night, I fell into a peaceful sleep in my husband’s arms and dreamed of Africa. This morning I awoke to a soft light filtering through the curtains in my bedroom. I was cozy in my soft, warm bed as I heard my children waking in their rooms, my son jumping out of bed early to play with the legos he got for his birthday last week. My daughter had a princess costume over her nightgown and a plastic tiara on her head as she sang in front of the mirror. Later, as I took our new puppy, Charlie, for his morning walk, my stomach growled. The question quickly on my mind was what I should have for breakfast, not when or IF I would eat today. After a bowl of cheerios, I filled the dishwasher, wiped the countertops, and checked email and Facebook on my phone. A basic American morning.

Certainly my perspective on all of that will change tomorrow, for tomorrow I will land in Africa. I will meet people and see lives that will no doubt awaken me to realities I can’t truly comprehend in the essentially spoiled American life I lead. I will glimpse a vision of life without 500 thread count sheets, iPhones, and pantries full of food. Indeed, those luxuries are beyond the comprehension of the people I will meet, who are waking this morning in a mud hut, without a husband’s strong arms around them to make them feel safe, without breakfast to fill their children’s bellies, without any of these things I take for granted. With 8 other people who will surely soon become my very dear friends, I am traveling to this country simply because God has called me there. I am leaving my husband and children back here, which sends ripples of anxiety through my heart every time I think about it. But God has called me. I have no idea what He has in store, but I know it will be incredible. Perspective altering. Life changing.

Many, many years ago, God put a camera in my hand and invited me to see the world as He sees it. Up until now, it has been the love between parent and child, the strength within a delicate flower, the grace of a sunrise, the peace of the ocean at twilight, the miracle of a newborn baby. I imagine I will see all of those things again on this new journey … love, strength, grace, peace, miracles … but now through a new lens. The filter of affluence I see through today will disappear. I pray that God guides my camera in the days ahead, that every frame is His vision, and that every image reflects His glory. I pray that he uses my camera to open my eyes.

I hope to have internet access in Zambia, and thus I hope to be able to update my blog along the way. I thank you for your love and prayers and ask that you keep our team in your prayers for safe travels, for unity in our purpose, and ultimately for all of us to humbly seek God’s will in our days there. Please pray for our families here, as many of us will be apart from our children and loved ones for the first time on a trip of this length. Most of all, please pray for the widows and orphans we will meet, that God will continue to work in their lives, through us and through all those who work with this ministry, to bring them provision and hope.

Much love,
Shannon

PS … You can read my earlier posts about this trip here and here.

Please note: I will not have access to voice mail at all while I am gone. Someone here will be checking my email, but most matters will have to wait until I return in a couple of weeks. Thank you in advance for your patience.

My family and I took a trip yesterday to the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, GA. With this weekend’s snow in Atlanta, we actually canceled some out of town plans we’d had, and we were in search of something new and different in the area for a fun day trip. My sons share two passions … reading and science. Astronomy, Paleontology, Geology, Meteorology … they are captivated by all of it. I discovered the Tellus Museum through a Google search looking for a local planetarium. What a find!

It is about a one hour drive from our home in Alpharetta, and well worth it. The museum was an adventure for all of us. They have done a wonderful job of making it fun and fascinating for kids and adults alike. My younger son has been talking a mile a minute this morning about panning for gems and the fossil dig. My oldest was enthralled with the Mineral Gallery. (Today is a school holiday and he already has our day planned with microscope experiments on the tiny rocks, minerals, and the dinosaur tooth we found.) Their planetarium is one of two digital planetariums in our state. This wasn’t the hazy slideshow that I remembered from my childhood field trips to another local planetarium. This was clear, vibrant, and exhilarating! The Big Backyard was also a Big Hit with all three of my kids – an hands-on exhibit for kids to explore and learn about things like sound waves, magnetism, weather, and electricity. It was difficult to tear them away when it was time to leave. Does your child love planes, trains and cars … yep, they have that too!

Check out the Tellus Science Museum for your next family outing! Here are some of our personal family snapshots from the day …

On a camera note: All pictures were taken with my beloved Panasonic Lumix ZS-3 pocket camera. Some days, I just want to be a mom and leave the big pro DSLR at home. I am incredibly picky when it comes to cameras, and I’ve been through 4 point-and-shoot cameras in the last few years. Each drove me crazy within a week and ended up in the junk drawer. But my Lumix is hands-down my most favorite point-and-shoot ever.

The photographs are bright and clear, the color is accurate, and the camera even handles low-light situations remarkably well. It boasts 10.1 megapixels, a 12X zoom, and Optical Image Stabilization. I also love that it doesn’t have that long and annoying shutter lag that so many pocket cameras have … you know, the reason you so often miss that great shot you were trying to capture?! And one of my favorite features is that it captures High Definition video!! I leave it in my purse most of the time, and I’ve caught so many great moments with my kids that I might have otherwise missed because my pro camera or my video camera was at home. Did I mention that I love this camera?

Much love,
Shannon

“This is the creature there has never been.
They never knew it, and yet, none the less,
they loved the way it moved, its suppleness,
its neck, its very gaze, mild and serene.

Not there, because they loved it, it behaved
as though it were. They always left some space.
And in that clear unpeopled space they saved
it lightly reared its head, with scarce a trace

of not being there. They fed it, not with corn,
but only with the possibility
of being. And that was able to confer

such strength, its brow put forth a horn. One horn.
Whitely it stole up to a maid – to be
within the silver mirror and in her.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke

I’m in the midst of a Photoshop reinstall today, along with some other computer maintenance on my main editing computer, so I can’t share any portrait session sneak peeks in this blog post. And in the absence of a photography related post, I thought I’d take the opportunity to share our new kitchen, something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. It was finished in late May of 2009 … it’s taken me this long to get around to posting some photographs on the blog!

It’s not that I think everyone out there is dying to know what my kitchen looks like, new or old. It’s just that our kitchen renovation was such an awesome experience, and we think the world of our builder, so I wanted to give him a little promotion for any of my clients and readers who might be in search of a builder. His name is Austin, and he is the genius behind New River Builders.

Our home was built in the early 1980’s, by my parents as a matter of fact. Yes, I grew up here. When my mother passed away about 7 years ago, my husband and I decided to renovate and move in. I’m very sentimental about my childhood home and I couldn’t stand the thought of giving it up. We loved the house, loved the neighborhood, loved Alpharetta … it just made sense to raise our family here. Of all the major renovations we did that year, the kitchen was not one of them … partly because we couldn’t decide what we wanted to do with it, and partly because we ran out of money.

Our kitchen was our least favorite part of the house in many ways. For the most part, it was just plain ugly. It had this beautiful but pain-in-the-you-know-what brick floor that was impossible to clean. It had old plywood cabinets and formica countertops. The layout, with the fridge sticking out in the middle of the room, was absurd. And like everything else in room, the appliances were 30 years old … it took 3 minutes to heat a can of soup in the microwave. At last in 2009, we came up with a plan for our kitchen that had us super excited. We interviewed and collected bids from 6 builders, and Austin was our choice.

Our plan would strip our kitchen down to bare sheet rock, down to the subfloor, and even down to the studs in some areas. We’d be moving plumbing and gas lines, widening doorways, tearing down the sheetrock ceiling. This was no small project. We had many friends warn us of the nightmare of a kitchen remodel. We would be without a stove, a sink, and all the other little conveniences for a matter of weeks. We set up a makeshift kitchen in our dining room, with a borrowed microwave and a toaster as our only appliances. Our spare fridge in the garage held our food. We killed many trees in those weeks, living off paper plates and paper towels. We ate more pizza than any human should.

But even with all that, it wasn’t a nightmare in the least. Austin was just fantastic to work with. He listened to all our ideas, and came up with many creative ones of his own, yet still in keeping with our vision for the space. We hit a few hiccups along the way … that is bound to happen in a 30 year old home … and Austin was right there with realistic answers and solutions. He had amazing attention to detail, and knew how to give us the best possible quality within our budget. Seeing our new space emerge day by day was so much fun.

Our old kitchen had no pantry, and no food storage whatsoever. Austin and his cabinet makers built us this custom 7+ foot armoire which now serves perfectly as our pantry.

It’s been 9 months since we ate our first meal in our new kitchen, and we love it even more today. It’s helped me even fall in love with my home all over again. I love sitting at our island with my morning coffee. I love watching my children do their homework at the kitchen table, and I love cooking dinner with my husband. (I even love our stainless steel appliances, now that I learned the secret to keeping them clean!! … baby oil!) The kitchen is truly the heart of a home, and I look at our kitchen as the backdrop of our everyday life. It’s just the backdrop I’d choose for these memories.

If you are in the Atlanta area and looking for a builder for your home renovation project, I hope you’ll give Austin a shout! He’s the best!