K. Lisbeth Photography

I’m alive! (I know you were worried.)

I haven’t been writing much lately due to a large change in where I’m focusing my creativity. (Although, let’s be honest here…I wasn’t writing much anyways.)

Introducing… K. Lisbeth Photography!

I’ve begun teaching myself how to use my camera, edit, and get the look I want in my photos. It’s a blast…I can’t believe I didn’t start sooner! Right now I’m working to build clientele. I have a crazy affordable Groupon deal going right now. Check it out! Tell your friends! I would love to take your photos!

Contact me through:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/klisbethphotography

Email: kaishabannon@gmail.com

Phone: (360)927-7493

bad blogger

To state the obvious….I’m a bad blogger. I know it. You know it. Maybe if I stopped stressing about being a good blogger I’d stop being such a horrendous one. Ah well. I need to not care so much about things, because when I do they consequentially don’t get done.

My piano teacher once told me I was a perfectionist. And it’s true. I’ve just learned to ignore it most of the time and choose imperfection. It’s funny: if I make a conscious choice to let things turn out the way they do and not trash it when it doesn’t compare to God, heaven, and the garden of Eden, they seem to turn out better. Probably not in reality. But my attitude changes and I snicker at my mistakes and let my creativity be human.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ve gone too far the other way and have started not to care enough. Possibly. But for now it’s better than the alternative.

So maybe I need to bring this approach to my blog. Just write. And let it be what it is.

1 Corinthians 2.9

“No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.”

I spent 3 hours painstakingly painting that verse on a crinkled brown piece of paper I had saved from the wrappings on a bouquet of flowers. The painting didn’t turn out that great. It’s hard to get the letters straight and the same size. And it’s not really bold enough on the wall because I painted the letters too skinny.

But it was good for my heart to slowly write those words. It forced me to think on what they mean.

It’s the end of week 4 of joblessness. 40 applications, 3 interviews, 10 resume drop offs, 3 nanny websites plus craigslist, 200 website checks for new positions, 20 nights sitting home alone.

It’s getting a little old. A little frustrating, a little boring, a little discouraging, a little lonely.

But God says that his plans for me bigger than my imagination. I suppose that means that I could end up with some crazy good job that impacts someone’s life in a huge way. Or that he moves us to some foreign country to do missions. Or that I have an opportunity to take a photography class and somehow become a famous photographer…or writer or crafty person or whatever. Or I suppose it could mean he leads me into some not so great situation that as far as I’m concerned kind of a bummer…but uses it to change lives that I don’t even know about. Whatever it is…I know I can trust him to find me the right job at the right time.

I love him. So in the end of the big picture…I will have an impact that is beyond anything I’ve ever seen, heard of, or even imagined.

He Speaks in the Silence

A month or two ago I discovered this blog: He Speaks in the Silence

It’s written, for the most part, by the wife of the pastor that began my church. She has so much wisdom, is down to earth, and fun to read. Here are some quotes from a recent post on forgiving:

“The only way for the ‘forgive-and forget mentality’ to be practiced is through radical denial, deception, or pretense.”It is not possible for us to forget, only to choose to “not remember” over and over again.

You have an enemy who works with the offenses of others to smother us with untruth. Satan cannot stand our reflection of God’s beauty. He will use the hurts of others to try to convince us that we are ugly and awful and less-than. We need to separate those enemy-fed lies from what actually happened.

Forgiveness does not require years and years of professional counseling. It is not a process as much as it is a heroic act of our wills. The process part is the sluggish following of our feelings to catch up with what we choose to do with our wills.

You are about to realize that I’m actually a nutcase.

It’s been a long week of minimal social interaction. For real. A fifteen minute interview Tuesday and youth group on Wednesday. And no work. Cody doesn’t count…and phone calls don’t really either. Although in my desperate need for a social life I can truly say that an hour long phone call with my mom is the most girl time I’ve had since she visited a month ago.

I realized about 5 minutes ago that it’s all starting to get to me. I very suddenly reached a point where I began having fake conversations with my lesbian neighbors and started making the facial expressions and hand gestures like it was real…while I walked in circles in my very small kitchen trying to decide if I was hungry and what I should do. Which lead into a tuneless song about Harry Potter while I went to fetch the book from my room. The people on friends, Harry Potter and I have our own little club for 10 hours every day while Cody’s at work. It’s great. Until I break off from the group to obsessively check craigslist, sitter city, and care for new job postings. Nanny websites are my new facebook.

And then I woke up from my reverie of fake neighborly conversations and realized that these crazy moods surprisingly don’t happen all that often and I should take advantage and write something weird and entertaining that I’ll later regret.

I’m pretty sure this is the fastest I’ve ever written a blog post. Also the longest I’ve ever allowed my paragraphs to be. I hate fat paragraphs.

redemption

‘Jesus died to save me from my sin.’

It’s the stereotypical sunday school gospel. It’s the first thing that pops into my head when I think ‘Gospel.’

Which is really unfortunate because it’s not exactly true. It’s only a smidgen of the truth. Sure Jesus saved me from my sin…from myself…from my terribly twisted attitudes and actions. I believe that one hundred percent.

But what about all the pain in my heart that’s not my fault? Because there really truly are times when my brokenness is the result of someone else’s sin, or just a side effect of living on a messed up earth.

I think Jesus died for more than forgiveness. More than “you’re off the hook for that rotten thing you said the other day.”

He died for redemption. For the restoration of the entire world to what he originally intended it to be. He died to reverse the downward spiral humanity is on.

And that includes the redemption of my heart. From everything it’s done and everything that’s been done to it. He died to return my broken heart and life to something beautiful, purely reflecting him.

So maybe sanctification is bigger than me acting and talking like Jesus. Maybe it’s just as much the way he gives me peace, hope, and joy, slowly reversing not just my terrible attitudes, but also the ravaging effect a torn and bleeding world has had on my soul. And maybe my part in that is to let it show. To live in a gracious honest way so that people near me can sense in my heart the beginnings of redemption and life being made whole.

the.HOPE.of.a.PESSIMIST

My brilliant, passionate, wise husband has started a BLOG! Check it out and maybe you’ll start to understand why I like him so much!

…

and another reason

Another reason I should never feel inadequate:

God sees me as perfect. He made my personality quiet and shy, my body shape thin with wide hips, my temperament melancholy, my hair uncontrollable, my heart kind, my teeth slightly crooked, and my facial features small…the way he thought was perfect. On top of that, he sent his son to die for me so that when his perfection goes wrong and I start puking sin everywhere, even that is taken away and my whole person is perfect to him. He calls it holy. I am holy.

That’s how God sees me.

But when I am mad because my hair is dumb, or upset because something doesn’t fit me right, or sad because I’m always sad, or angry because I hurt someone, or scared because I’m out of my comfort zone for the 2435479th time that day, I start telling myself that I’m not good enough. For anybody, for anything, for life. And I lie to myself over and over and over, claiming the exact opposite of what God says is true about me.

I claim to know better than God. I claim to know true beauty, because I’m obviously not it. I claim to know what personalities are the best, because it’s obviously not mine. I claim to know what sins will cause the most damage to the world, because they’re definitely mine.

And in the bad attitude and depression I unknowingly claim to be better and wiser than God.

Oops.

So I need to remind myself when I’m feeling not good enough, that God says I am. And who am I to argue with God?