“You must believe Him. Believe He can do what He says He can do. Believe you can do what He says you can do.
Believe He is who He says He is. And believe you are who He says you are.”
-Beth Moore, Praying God’s Word

Unbelief is one of those things that I never really felt like I struggled with.  But as I read through this chapter in Beth Moore’s book this morning, I realized that there is ALWAYS room for our faith to grow.  And to be honest, I face it around this time every year when I’m hoping to book weddings and hear from potential brides and my stomach does its little knot dance every time I hear hear my email notification ding.  I trust that God will take care of this dream that I have.  But do I really believe that He will provide just the right weddings with just the right clients at just the right locations?  Part of me says yes because I look at the brides and grooms I’ve been so blessed to work with and I look at the couples that we get to work with this year and stand amazed that God continues to bring such amazing people our way.

But the other part of me still doubts that He will bring more of those same couples.  Why in the world do I do that??

We set a goal to book and shoot 20 weddings this year.  And right now we’re half way there.  It’s exciting and scary all at the same time.  I love getting to meet people who are so in love and ready to walk down that aisle to begin their life together and I always hope beyond hope that they’ll choose me to document their day!  But Ben and I talk about it all the time how even the ones that choose to go with another photographer are ones that needed to BE with THAT photographer.  For whatever reason!  And in all honesty, I’m totally ok with that.

As I read through this chapter in Beth Moore’s book this morning, I remembered how God’s people would build physical alters when something significant happened.  So while I won’t be doing that (I feel like our backyard would start to look a little creepy to the neighbors), I did ask Him to help me build an alter of memories for each time He had taken care of me, provided for me, protected me, and of course, saved me.  And each time I have doubt, each time I’m not believing Him as He wants me to, I pray that He will take me to those memories.  I don’t want to be like the Israelites wandering in the desert still not believing God even after seeing all the amazing things they had (hello… he PARTED A SEA for you to walk through!!).  Because truth be told, God has parted Red Seas for me too.  There have been times when I walked through things without a scratch when in reality, I should have been crumbled into bits.

The part of Beth’s quote above that really got to me was, “Believe YOU can do what He says YOU can do.”  God has given each of us talents and gifts.  And if we’re using those to honor and glorify Him then He’s going to bless that.  For whatever reason God chose to put a camera into my hands ages ago.  And while there aren’t any works of art from those early days, I kept going, I kept doing, I kept believing that there was a reason this little black box that could capture moments and memories was entrusted to me.  I’m excited to see how He uses us this year, through wedding season, through births, through whatever else He has in store for us.

My prayer is that I will believe big things because the God we serve is a big God and I don’t want to miss out on something because my eyes were looking down instead of looking up to try and see where He wants us to go.