Devra | Portraits

Her name is Devra Clawson. 

We've got the same last name.

Rightfully so, since she's my cousin and a particularly awesome one at that. 

We had a family get together in St.Paul this afternoon and Devra and I escaped to the river walk of the Mississippi for a mini portrait session filled with wind, winding walkways and water. Approximately 99,000 gallons of it rushing by every minuet, actually. 

I love Devra. She and I have logged countless hours of  laughing, photoshooting, swinging, attempting to ride strange three wheeled objects, you name it. Most of our adventures usually started somehow with "Hey, Dev. I've got a good idea." and ended with "Let's never do that again." She is adventurous and perky, intelligent and kindhearted. Our calendars keep filling up, rendering us more and more busy everyday and yet, at family gatherings, Devra reminds me of my childhood, when things were slower. We've always been able to pick up where we left off and I love it. She is steady in that way, timeless.  

I love her. You would too. 

Essential to the Eyes

 Unseen. Things Unseen. Invest in Things Unseen

Portrait of Self | 12:14am

I pack up for Texas in eight days and between now and then, I've got a double-sided, enormous paged do-to list that will not tolerate anything but extinction.
Needless to say, I've been working around the clock to get projects finished. Please excuse the irrational, erratic, and/or confusing posts. Everything happens at one time.

-Laura

Where, then, can we find life? What is life?

"What is life? Life is more than profound than thought; thought never surpasses life. It also is deeper than emotion; emotion is superficial in compassion with life. Whether thought or emotion, it is relatively external. What, then, is life? The Lord Jesus declared: "I am the life." 
We should not hastily conclude that we have met life when all we meet is a kind of hot atmosphere, such as a so-called spiritually hot atmosphere. We should ask instead, whence does such atmosphere arise? Plenty of experiences confirm to us that many who are skillful in creating hot atmosphere know very little of the Lord,  many excitable persons are quite lacking in the knowledge of the Lord. Only Christ is life, the rest is not.  

We need to learn the lesson of knowing life. For life depends not on how enthusiastic is our emotion or on how manifold is our thought; it rests exclusively on whether the Lord has manifested His own self. There is therefore nothing more important than to know the Lord.  As we are knowing Him, we are touching life. We ought to see before God the meaning of Christ our life. Those who are easily excitable or especially clever are not necessarily people how know the Lord. Knowing Him requires a spiritual seeing. Such seeing is life and it transforms us. If we know the Lord as our life , we realize the utter futility of all natural efforts in spiritual matters. Hence, we look to Him alone."

                                               -Watchman Nee, Christ, The Sum of All Spiritual Things 

Page 13, April 6th

In one sense we are always traveling 
and traveling as if we did not know where we were going.

In another sense we have already arrived.

We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, and that is why we are traveling in darkness. But we already posses Him by grace, and therefore, in that sense, 
we have arrived and are dwelling in light.

But Oh!
How far I have yet to go to find You, in Whom I have already arrived!
-Thomas Merton

Shall We Dance

I'm 22 and my pre-teen heart still skips a beat at the sight of her dress in full motion, spinning wildly around the ball room.

Better Late Than Never

I finally got my plan laid out for this year. 

About time.

It's a huge weight off my shoulders and really, really, really 

exciting

things to come. 

April 1st is the new January 1st.

All my life I've searched for an adventure like following Christ.