When Life Gives You Really Sour Lemons…

Personal

May 4, 2018

There are times in life when you’re walking along living the everyday status quo when something comes along and knocks you right on the ground.

That something could be really great and exciting or something that makes you question everything. It may make you look around in your own life and see exactly how you’re spending it. What are my priorities? Am I living my life based on the things that are most important to me? Or even bigger, am I doing what God has created me for?

Heavy, I know.

I bring all of this up because I recently had one of those events that knocked the wind right out of me…

It was any old Monday, and if you know me, Mondays are really a hard day for me anyway (lots and lots of coffee get me to work), but on this particular one, I was worn out from the weekend because I’d been really sick. I had an extremely busy day at my nursing job, and by the end of the day, I was just ready to park myself in front of the TV and watch The Voice.

As soon as I pulled into my driveway, I knew something was off. The garage door was open, which I close everyday, and my dog, who stays in a room with a closed door, came running out. I entered my house and found it ransacked. There was stuff everywhere. I quickly checked on my dogs, who were thankfully all okay, and then headed to my bedroom to see what all was missing, and found ALL of my camera equipment (among other things) was gone. Tears filled my eyes, and my heart sank all the way down to my toes. My house was broken into. Someone was in my safe place touching and ranking all of my possessions, as they took what could get them the most cash in return. It made me sick.

I’ll be honest, in retrospect, I was really angry about everything that was stolen, but even more than that, I was heartbroken that the one or two people who did this totally changed how I look at others.

I’ve always been the person that looks for the best in people, and now I feel like that trait was taken away from me.

As many people have asked, yes, my homeowners insurance will cover most of what was lost. All in all though, I’ve learned that the things that they took is truly just “stuff.” I can get more stuff, but I can’t get back the people in my life. I’m so thankful that no one was hurt.

Even though it may sound silly, getting all of my camera gear stolen was a big hit for me. Hannah and I have worked tirelessly to earn the gear that we’ve acquired over the past few years, so to have that taken away was really hard. And, I’ll be honest, I thought about throwing in the towel on photography all together. I prayed and asked God if this was a sign that I was supposed to close this chapter of my life and start again. It felt like He was challenging me to make the decision to keep following my dream or not.

After a week of contemplation, I did choose to buy all of my gear again and keep working at this crazy dream that Hannah and I have created. In the beginning of our business, we basically took everything step by step as things came to us, but this time, I feel like I made a very conscious decision to keep going, which does feel good.

I want to thank everyone who knew this was going on this past week for all of your love and prayers. I really needed it!

And, thank you if you made it to the end of this post. It was a long one, but I needed to write it for myself.

If this has ever happened to you, I’m so sorry! I know how you feel, and I’m sending you a virtual hug.

-Chelsea

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