I had a fairly typical weekend, I tried to squeeze too many things into too few days, typical. But on Saturday afternoon in the midst of all the crazy everything came to a crashing halt.

I had stolen Alexis away from her family so we could go to Starbucks for Frappuccino Happy Hour and then she was going to assist me on a family session. We’d both been up since 5:30am so it was kind of the tired leading the tired, but at least we were getting coffee. We drove up the road from Starbucks heading towards the location of my shoot talking on and on about who knows what, then all the sudden I was in tears.

Talk about things you’re not expecting.

I was in the left turn lane just arriving at the South Coast Botanic Gardens and my voice was shaking [my whole body was shaking] and I was furiously trying to blink away my tears.

On October 12, 2007 I sat in the passenger seat of a silver mini van and made that same left turn into the Botanic Gardens, 3 little ones were in the back seat and next to me in the drivers seat was a very pregnant Alexis. It was my very first photo session. We weren’t even friends [yet], but months before, over cups of coffee in the church cafe, when she’d first found out she was pregnant Alexis asked me to take maternity photos for her. A lot of life happened during those 9 months, for me and for Alexis [but mostly for Alexis, you can read about it here.] so it took until the day before her scheduled cesarian to get together for these photos. October 12, 2007.

When I made that left turn into the Botanic Gardens this past Saturday, memories from that first day at the gardens came flooding back. It was a Friday, I thought I didn’t like kids but then 7-year-old Phoebe invited me to come to Sam’s Club with them after the shoot, the batteries in my point and shoot camera [!] died so I shot the session primarily on black and white film, that I later developed and enlarged in the darkroom at Cypress College, I felt a baby move inside her momma for the first time, Alexis and I took the first awkward steps towards a new friendship and I found photography in a way I never had before and completely fell in love.

It’s impossible to put in to words all has come from that day, which is what makes it so emotionally overwhelming. As I sat in that left turn lane everything from the last 4 and a half years came flooding back to me, the desperation, the brokenness and pain, the dreams, the joy. A full time photography career has grown from that day, but a baby album sits on the shelf in the home of people I now love like family filled with photographs of a baby girl I never got to hold.

For the last 4 years I’ve only ever been able to look at these images and see them for how technically awful they are [and they are technically awful!] But on Saturday I was reminded how many technically awful situations God uses to bring about something beautiful.