Dreaming + Trusting

and the radical generosity of creative women

Clear blue skies and the Arizona foothills blur around me. I’m making the familiar drive from Yuma back to San Diego, for some time with friends at our last duty station. I haven’t yet made any friends in Yuma. Maybe its because of the 115 degree daily blaze that is Yuma and everyone is holed up in their air conditioned homes. Maybe it’s because I am still trying to figure out how to unpack. Or because marriage is hard even two years after deployment. Or maybe I’m still adjusting to being a new mom to a nine-month-old after a traumatic C-section five weeks early.

I Vox with a friend regularly to dull the loneliness. “Have you ever listened to the Coffee + Crumbs podcast?” I hadn’t. In fact, In 2014 I hadn’t yet listened to any podcast (can you even imagine such a time?) I cue up an episode. I cannot get enough of these honest, funny, delightful women. On my lonely drive between the desert and the beach, I pass a banana mum-mum to my Charles’ chubby hand in the back of the car. I think to myself, these women could be my friends.

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Over the years, Jason and I dream - of life outside the Marine Corps, of where my creative work could take me, of how our family will grow and change. We dream of it all and we watch the story unfold in front of us.

The essays of Coffee + Crumbs meet me in some of my loneliest seasons of life. I bookmark the ones I need to come back to. These honest, beautiful stories remind me that mothers are linked through the essence of the work we do and stories we live.

These women hand us their stories, and they hold us together.

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As our family grows from two to four kids, all under the age of four, I’m booking photo sessions during nap time and taking client calls locked in the bathroom as little hands knock and ask for more snacks. Jason and I become passing ships - he comes home from work, I head to a photo session. I try to schedule weddings and sessions on weekends he isn’t traveling for work or at drill. It works until it doesn’t.

I notice myself more and more with a laptop in front of me, shuffling children off to play, to a snack, to a screen. I love my creative work, but not at the cost of being present in this season where I can see clearly that my family needs me. I decide to set my work down. I know the dream isn’t dead, I know that. Being an artist and being a mother can coexist - but I had to hand my creative dreams to God. I had to trust He would hand it to me when it was time. I join Exhale Creativity to keep the dimming spark of my creative dreams alive.

Two years later, I get a message on Instagram:

“Can I message you an idea on Voxer?”

The message is from Ashlee Gadd. She needs a Visual Storyteller for Coffee and Crumbs and she wants to know if I am interested. My hands are open - this invitation is all the oxygen in the room to reignite my dream.

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Charles is nine now - about to turn ten. Over the years, after I would take photos of him he would ask “can I take one of you?” It might seem crazy to hand a professional camera over to a three year old, but it was delightful to let him create alongside me from such a young age. I would drape the camera strap around his neck and let him click away. Honestly, he has taken some of my favorite photos of myself. Maternity photos and holding newborn babies and toddlers. There is something magical about seeing yourself through the eyes of your children.

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I have combed through all my photos over the last seven years, but nothing is quite right for our Coffee + Crumbs cover. Ashlee and I go back and forth with ideas. We know we are close, but we don’t have it just yet. I don’t have time to do a model call. Reluctantly, I get myself and my kids cleaned up, and head to the lake across the street. I have a few ideas, but I need Charles to take the photos. He happily agrees. We talk about the settings and framing, and he clicks away. I am reluctant to agree that I think the final image works - it feels so weird to be on the cover - I am much more comfortable behind the camera. I say a prayer of thanks for the art of blurry photos. I cannot deny the fact that the real reason this photo is perfect is because my son took it.

Ashlee sends a generous thank you gift to Charles and I show him how his name will be in the magazine as a contributing photographer. His eyes beam. “I had no idea that would happen!” He delights in telling friends and family about his first photography gig.

Coffee and Crumbs has spent the last ten years making mothers and their children feel safe, known, encouraged, and loved through honest, artful storytelling. It has been delightful to contribute to the first ever Coffee + Crumbs Magazine (now available for preorder!!!) in my own small way. This is a work of art and stories you can hold in your hands. A tangible reminder that art and motherhood can coexist, and that only together can we live out our dreams.

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