When I was in art school, I had to watch a documentary on glass makers.  It always fascinated me to see them heat a lump of glass to an almost molten state and then shape and prod it into something lovely.  It took an immense amount of heat and work to get it to that point, to refine it into its final purpose.  Sometimes, the glass would harden or crack and have to be reworked or melted down again.  Not matter what happened, the artist always had a final goal in mind, a purpose for that glass that was just waiting to be fulfilled.  Sometimes the process went smoothly and sometimes it didn’t.  The last eight months, I have felt like that glass.  I felt like I was constantly being shoved into a furnace to be worked, reshaped, and refined.  Looking back I know that is what it was but being in the midst of that process, it didn’t feel like that.

In early July we got an email letting us know that J might be loosing his job because of budget cuts.  It would mean a huge change for us if it did happen and it was not what had been in our plans.  We felt like the rug had been pulled out from under us and we had landed upside down.     In September the board made a decision of who to keep and who to cut, yet we still had no clue what our future would look like.  Just like that lump of glass, stuck in a hot oven, we were being prepared for what lay ahead.

There were many times I thought we would break under the strain of not knowing.  We are planners, both of us type A people and in a business where I need to be able to plan ahead, this has been especially hard.  We needed to go through this valley of uncertainty though.  We both realized that we have been so focused on the word our.  Our plans for the business, our goals for our future, our timeline of where we want to be left little room for what mattered most.

What I realized at the end of 2015 and through the beginning of January is that God had been softening our hard glassy hearts in a furnace to accept His will and His plans for our lives.  He had been taking the last year to shape us, refine us, and mold us into a family that had Him at the center.

Over the last 8 months our shift has gone from one of begging God to keep us where we were to surrendering and saying “Your will be done”.  In the past months, I have seen that shift occur not only in our home life but in this business.  I have been running this business since 2009 with the goal of growing it and providing income into our family but this business is so much more.  This business is a bridge to serve and speak truth and joy into the lives of women and families that I come in contact with.  I use the word mine and I but it isn’t, this business is His.

Literally, the day after I surrender that, we received an answer unofficially!  God was physically keeping us where we wanted to be but our hearts were no longer in the same space they had been.  These last 8 months may seem like a curse but they have been a blessing as we have been reshaped, refined, and remade.

Whatever you are going through, it may seem hard but what are you being reshaped for?

Glass Blowing and Life | Williamsburg Wedding Photographer