Welcome to the Journey

Hi, I’m Meg. Thanks for joining me here. Every great story needs a beginning, and right now that is where we are, at the beginning. Come and learn a little bit about the blog, my life, and my passions.

Like I said, every story has a beginning, and we are here at the start of something hopefully amazing. But though this is the start of one journey, I am in the middle or nearing the end of many others, too. I’m always in the middle of family – the middle of laughter and tears, highs and lows and always-togetherness. I’m almost at the end of my school journey, as I finish the final class for my degree in August (Associates in Applied Sciences in Commercial Graphics, with a focus on photography). Just months ago I finished the second draft of the novel I have been working on since high school. Yet with every ending, there comes a new beginning….

This is a blog, then, about the journey, the in-betweens and the overlapping endings and beginnings. The creative process is exactly that – a process – something that requires time, patience, pushing yourself up against the walls until you can push through them or work around them.

 I’m excited to share my own adventure with you as I walk through this process – particularly in my two favorite mediums, photography and creative writing. But beyond that, we will come back to the One who had given us this gift, the ember of creative passion, the desire to shape beauty in the world or express what we have seen and experienced. Because that is the true purpose of this spark – to glorify and draw us back to Him. And really all of the journey, the process, is about learning to walk with Him in it.

Creativity is part of God’s character, evident in the beauty and intricacy of our world. And human beings are created in His image, or after His character. That is why we bear this characteristic, this drive, this desire. I believe that this creative ember, placed in us, like all things was broken when humanity chose to turn away from our perfect Creator. Instead we decided to go our own way, but apart from the One who created us, nothing functions as it should. Yet even in the midst of the world’s brokenness, we still catch glimpses of the original beauty all things were created with. And God didn’t leave us this way, but Christ came and took our own brokenness on Himself, so that we could be restored.

Those who trust in Christ through His Spirit are restored to walk in relationship with Him. He is renewing us and all things to the way He created them to be – reflections of His own beauty. This is the true journey, that everything else ties into – Christ drawing us closer and closer to Himself from wherever we have wandered, us learning to walk beside Him, even as we often still try to pull away. I am learning to walk beside Him, even as I often still try to pull away. And this is something else I am right in the middle of. It is easy to write all of these words, infinitely harder to live them out, to think about in the midst of everything that happens day to day. But the beautiful thing about this journey – about all of the journeys we walk – is that Christ directs every step of it, and He has promised the end.

So, where has my journey taken me so far? As a little girl my parents taught me about Christ’s love and sacrifice. I received my first camera at the age of five (it was pink, used film, and came with a matching photo album), though it wasn’t until much later that I realized photography could be an art form. When I was eight years old my family moved from Wisconsin to the South Carolina Lowcountry, which I still call home today. It was here that my dad first started exploring creative photography – capturing scenes and details of historic Charleston and the beautiful natural landscape. Eventually his work sparked my own interest in the unique way the world can be seen through the lens, and as I got older I started to explore the possibilities of the medium for myself.

As a shy, nerdy girl with a decidedly ordinary life, stories helped me to escape, explore new worlds, and connect to characters who felt the same things I did – and ultimately overcame their challenges or got to go on amazing adventures. Reading was my favorite hobby. My sisters and I spent hours creating our own elaborate narratives and imaginary worlds with dolls and stuffed animals (it was serious). When I was nine years old, I received a school creative writing assignment with a prompt I had to finish. The result was a short piece about dog astronauts -inspired by the aforementioned stuffed animals – returning from space, and the decision I that I wanted to be an author.

As I got older, I grew closer to Christ. Faith once seemed like something stagnant and institutional. But through the Spirit I began to realize God’s true beauty and wonder and how He was reaching out to me in relationship, and I engaged with Him personally for the first time. I began to see how He covered all of my life. Eventually, after a long bit of struggle, I came to understand this included my artistic passions as well.

As I prepared to enter high school, I decided that I wanted to pursue professional portrait photography as a career. I still held on to my author dream as well, and around the same time, I began writing the story that would become my first novel (currently now in the editing phase after Draft 2). In high school, I was invited by another writer from my church to join a Christian writing critique group. For the past few years this community has been vital in providing encouragement and fellowship and helping me grow in my craft. I started studying photography at a local technical college in 2019, and now am almost finished with my degree, as previously mentioned. I have learned so much not only about the technical skills required for the medium, but also how to see creatively and about the creative process itself, which I’m excited to share with you now.

So, welcome to the journey – not just one but many, overlapping and interweaving, plots and subplots and perhaps a few unexpected twists. Come explore with me as I navigate these moments of excitement and mundanity (because let’s be real here, doing laundry is never glamorous), and share reflections and progress. More than anything I hope that maybe, wherever you are at, you will feel a little less alone in your own journey. Because even if our paths or struggles look different, we are all a little bit in the middle of something, not quite sure where our next steps might take us, and it’s easy to forget that others face the same things too. So let’s walk together, through the ups and downs, and all the middles and endings and beginnings. I can’t wait to see where we will go.