Hi, I'm Jennifer Blair.
There are few things I enjoy more in life than creating art. My aim is to create as a reflection of the Creator. Thanks for stopping by my blog. Here you'll find posts of me work, family adventures, and thoughts on following Jesus in today's world.
There is something extra special about photographing twins. It brings back all the memories of when our twin boys were so tiny. It's a unique and incredible journey to have have multiples. The Bunnell family welcomed the most precious twin baby girls into their family recently. It was such an honor to photograph this precious family and document the arrival of their twin daughters. They were such a dream to photograph. It’s so sweet that twins are so comforted by the nearness of each other. Being a twin mom is pretty incredible.
I love creating things, anything really, whether it is working to make a garden or making art when I photograph my kids. It’s in our DNA to create as image-bearers of God. But I don’t really create from nothing; I create with things God has already made. He is the one who makes things from nothing, and yet invites us to be co-workers with Him. There is no other place I can see this more deeply than in raising children. God does the deepest work of creation, but allows us as mothers to have life grow within us. As children grow, He partners with us in their continued growth and development. They are exactly who He made them to be. We don’t choose their personalities or features, but we do get to be a part of shaping what God is doing in them. What a gift and privilege!
I don’t have to know where I’m going anymore. I’m fine with riding passenger. It’s taken a while to get rid of the bad theology of “The American Dream” (or most of it, I hope). I’m not the “master of my fate” or the “captain of my soul” as stated in Invictus. I’m content, joyful even, to know Jesus is leading me. Even with so many reasons to be discontented, I’ve found God has given me contentment. I’m less “in control” than I have ever been. I honestly don’t even know what this summer or next year will look like, what I’ll be doing, or if things will resolve in so many respects. Yet I know this is where God has led me. So how can I have contentment without any “game plan”?
I don’t think there has ever been a time in my life I haven’t been hoping for something. I’ve struggled throughout my life when there wasn’t something “to look forward to”. If there wasn’t anything, I planned something, anything. When things got hard I comforted myself by looking ahead and thinking, “But I just have to make it until ___ (something fun) comes.” My joy and contentment was very much controlled by the circumstances of my life. (Enter the difficult years.) It’s been a crazy past 4-5 years, full to the brim with difficult things. To name a few: a hurricane crushing our home, my mom dying after a sudden diagnosis of late-stage cancer, my husband having emergency heart surgery at 35, being homeless several times, PTSD, etc…Planning something to look forward to just stopped working for me at some point. When life is so hard you can’t look beyond the next few hours or when what you see ahead only brings more anxiety, you need something MORE. Better. Deeper.
It’s the time of year that many people look back on the year that is drawing to a close and highlight all the good or say “good riddance” and wish for a better year to come. I’ve thought often about what this year means to me in retrospect. It was certainly an “ebenezer” year, and I wish I had an actual stone to put somewhere in remembrance. It was a year I saw a true miracle: God spared my husband’s life when he had, at best, a 2% chance of survival. It was incredible, undeniable and I will never be the same or stop being grateful that we can all still be together as a family. But we can’t tie up our story with a nice bow. We can’t say “God saved Jonathan and this is why.” I can’t negate the dark valley I walked through afterwards or the fact that Jonathan still lives with a medical condition that gives him pain and hinders normal activity. He still can’t run around in the yard with our kids and he’s not back to 100%. The discouragement and limitations that continual nagging pain causes is hard for us both, especially because it looks like there may not be any resolution on the horizon apart from another miracle of God.
I love the Christmas season, and I always have. But as I read the other day, Christmas seems to be a great magnifier of good and bad. Many good things seem even better, and hard things can feel even harder. I have known both sides. This time of year reminds me of loss and reminds me of my innumerable blessings. Over the years I’ve parred down the things that we do during Christmas. Don’t get me wrong, I love all the things! But oftentimes I need the simplicity so that I savor the reason we are celebrating and not succumbing to merely being busy. I’ve found that these are things we do every year because they are simple and meaningful. Apart from reading a good advent devotional, here are a few of the sweet traditions we enjoy, old and new:
The outdoors have always called to me. Many times I feel I simply need to go outside and feel some sunshine on my face. During our normal homeschool days, we try to take a daily walk around our neighborhood. But after my husband almost lost his life in February, I’ve been rethinking, well, everything. I took an imaginary look forward into our future. In five years I will be 40 years old, our youngest (the twins) will be 7 or 8 and our oldest will be 14. I can’t imagine them being so big and independent since they insist on “Mommy!” for everything at present. That is a big change in such a short amount of time. It reminded me that I have a lot of groundwork to lay in these brief years. There are more vital things than schoolwork, though I do still want a high bar set for academics. Going through something traumatic will teach you that you can’t survive without a good framework and a good vision for your life. The unnecessary things seem to crumble away. I see now the need to change a lot of rhythms in my life, and being outside for my sake and my kids was something we all needed more than our current schedule allowed. Our curriculums have always encouraged a field trip day or something of the like on Fridays, and we did that plenty, but now we go outside for different reasons.
I have always thought that Autumn is the perfect time of year for family photos, but every year I fall more and more in love with Utah in the Fall. The Wise family was such a joy to work with this year. Each family is uniquely beautiful, and I love seeing how each person and family is never replicated. Even though this is my favorite location, no shoot ever turns out the same. I loved how this family was so caring for their baby brother. The light was beautiful, but love makes the magic in photos.