Life has its ways of turning things around…
For the longest time, I have always wanted to recreate a photo I created over 5 years ago. Ever since then, I would always pass by the same area where I took the original image and say to myself how I would go and take the shot, yet I never really had my camera handy to do so.
Five years ago, I created a photo that I called, “Beauty in the Broken”. In that still shot, I have my friend spinning around under a broken down shelter that has been in the same spot since I can remember. I took the photo to signify a future time in my life where I would no longer feel messed up inside or deep in despair. To me, that image was a promise I made to myself that I would no longer be broken. I didn’t know when that would happen, but I knew it was bound to come true.
Since those five years, I have been on a journey of finding my true source of happiness, clinging on to my faith, and reassuring myself that all will be well soon.
Going back to the same area where I shot that image made me ponder what had happened to the shelter. Of course knowing how a wreck it was, it was destined to be destroyed and thrown away as if it never existed—yet it’s foundation still remained.
Maybe one day something different will be built there.
But as for myself and that promise I made long ago, all did indeed become well. Did I realize that photo would signify my transformation of discovering true happiness? No, I did not. But as I stepped onto that ground once again and began spinning just as I had instructed my friend to do so five years ago, what was captured instead was me looking beyond the distance. And in that moment I knew I have always had the peace I have always been looking for—that stillness that changed everything. It has never left me, but rather it was only felt when I stayed put and listened in silence. All I can say just looking back at my old photo and the one I recently took is “I am broken no more.”
And it’s all thanks to Him.
