Connect!

Follow

Friday, January 25, 2013

January 17-24 Self-Portraits: Aspects of Community and Living Connected



The self-portrait photo placed at the bottom of the collage is of Lisa Guillon who blogs and writes One Big Luv. One of my favorite parts of being a photographer and artist is self-portrait photography. This is why I am super excited to be taking on my 2013 photographic challenge of photographing myself everyday of this year. How can I tell the story of 2013 through self-portraiture? I will be sharing my self-portraits from the week every Friday. I invite you to e-mail me your self portraits at julieann.johnson00@gmail.com throughout the week and I will post them here with mine. No matter what, self-portraits tell a story about the beautiful you that exists that very moment you hit the button.

Self Portraits are a reflection of every person that has ever made a dent in my life.  I love how this self-portrait series is slowly and organically building into a fun mosaic of amazing self-portraits of friends in Kansas City/St. Louis and my fellow creative blogging friends.

But it got me thinking of the idea of community in my own life again....


Yesterday my house was a literal revolving door of people from various communities in my life that wanted to come over to see Asher and hang out. I feel blessed to be a part of communities in this city and others where people long to live a life together, celebrate with us, and just be present when things are hard. Making the choice to live in community is paramount to growing in God and as people. To quote Bob Goff, author of Love Does, "God reveals himself to us by giving us each other." I have been feeling that 100% during this chapter of my life. However, it also reminds me that good things build slowly and organically. This is hard for people like me who get impatient and want to feel instant gratification. I forget that the struggle is a part of the story. I remember some seriously dark, isolating days when we first moved to St. Louis from Seattle. Coming from a community where you feel known and loved to a place where you feel unknown and disconnected, you begin to savor days like today-when you feel roots of your community go deeper.



2 comments:

Tara said...

This post resonates so deep with me right now. Community is vital and yet so hard to find sometimes. I'm glad you have loving people surrounding you right now.

Unknown said...

Thanks Tara!! It is vital and hard at times. I pray you experience the same thing with everything going on in the place you are with your family. I know when my father-in-law was ill with an AI disease the community my in-laws small really rallied around them during his illness. Community and friends makes all the difference!