Dry Bones, Broken Cisterns

In this college town called Denton, drugs are where the students are, following them like a preying lion. "Honey oil," unknown to my once marijuana-filled mind, is pure THC resin (like hash). Apparently, it's a recent development.

I didn't try it. But I'm not going to lie, it was tempting. I could excuse my way into partaking, probably with little harm and much benefit to my flesh. It's when sin is viewed as something "good," even "right," that Satan has his greatest victory.

I made sure to share what God had spoken to me about drugs, two years ago this time. I was returning home from a 5-month stay in Austin, with a pipe full of weed in San Antonio to greet me. The reality of temptation was there, and I wanted to get rid of it. But instead of just throwing it away, I asked God to smite me, to show me his thoughts. In the act of disobedience, not the best question.

Right before and exactly the time I placed the flame to my pipe, my ears were filled with the sound of chains dragging and a door closing, like a jail-cell door. This happened about three times, as if it were moving from house-to-house on my cold-de-sac. Freaked, I went inside. As I walked in, my ears then filled with the sound of crows cawing. I asked my dad if he heard anything. Nope. I sat down in the living room with the lights off, my heart beating rapidly, and prayed for the sounds to leave. They did. Then I felt a burning sensation come up my leg, as if they were being held to fire. I was not even high at this point. I placed my hand on my leg and prayed desperately for the fire to leave. It did. I crawled into bed and fell asleep as quickly as possible.

Turns out I had some strongholds, and I needed deliverance only God could bring. That came a few months later at the annual onething conference at IHOP Kansas City, over the new year. "Lord, I pray for neural pathways," said my brother, laying his hands on my head. Immediately, a physical mass of junk shot down from the top of my head, down the back of my throat, all the way down my legs and into the ground. The feeling was so weird and brief, and I'll never forget it. I began to declare and repent of past sins. I had a vision of Jesus standing outside my bedroom window, always there as I smoked, desperately wanting my freedom. It was as if a veil had been removed. I could write, I could hear His voice. I was rewired.

Over the course of that conference, I experienced the manifest power of God. Some call this the camp experience. It is now my understanding that God wants his children to have camp every day of their life. I came expectantly, boldly before the throne of grace, and asked for dreams. His grace ushers us into even more grace.

Vignettes of God's thoughts in the night were new and wonderfully strange to me. One only a few minutes long depicted me driving in a parking lot to report a drug dealer. I had weed in my pocket, but did not desire it at all. It was as if I were undercover. "You will not desire it, and you will establish my justice through intercession," was the message impressed upon me as I prepared to attend UNT that spring.

God has made it evident that he did not walk me through all those years of drug-abuse for nothing.

A few hours before leaving Kansas City, we were at the prayer room and I was talking on the phone with my sister, Laurie. "Be expectant," she said, noting that God would use me or others to pray and prophesy. This, too, was new to me, for about two minutes. "Uh, Laurie, I need to call you back." A guy had just walked up to me saying, "God told me to ask you for prayer, because you received deliverance from drug abuse and you are supposed to pray over me." Click.

I drop off my friend and after sharing a bit of my story, head back to the barn. I'm in the upstairs on the land, eager to hear what God had to say. I asked, "what are your thoughts about this night," and heard, "John 4:13." Keep in mind I don't know what this says - I typically don't - but it seems to be how God wants to write the scroll on my heart. It's hard to forget as a personal message:

"Anyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again."

Drug water, entertainment water, food water, money water, girlfriend water - it doesn't matter what it is, all are broken cisterns, stagnant waters. In this life, true satisfaction cannot be found from any source other than God. There is a longing deep inside of each one of us that can only be satisfied by streams that are living, always moving and causing us to change. "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart..." (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

How often we fall prey to the schemes of our adversary, the spirit of this age, and neglect the first commandment given to Moses! "You shall have no other gods before me."

Paul & Deni

Paul Ruiz and I grew up together in San Antonio. Things that click, clack and clang are the instruments we played. A cadence of drums, swishing basketballs, things that shoot (cameras, paintball guns, actual guns?!), and now, a heartbeat for Jesus, keep the rhythm of our lives in sync. We discovered that Light together, under the Milky Way on one-night-trips to his family's desolate ranch in Yancey, Texas, outside Hondo. Now he is gearing up to serve two months in foreign skies as Airman First Class. There, he will surely feel a pulse unlike anything I was able to share on the football fields of South Texas, heartbeats marching in time.

Paul met Deni Flores on an annual church retreat, about two years ago. Without any intent on finding love, they found it. She lives in Dallas, coordinates weddings and loves elephants (I was undercover photographer for the proposal, by the beasts at the Fort Worth Zoo). She and Paul have a similar sense of humor and always try to "take it aaysee."

A last-minute breakdown of my car brought Paul and Deni scrambling to Denton, with about an hour of light left before sundown. On our way to Wal-Mart for some batteries, I saw flying in the Saturday evening breeze a row of flags celebrating Labor Day weekend. I knew that would be our chance to hopefully make some great pictures; airport uncertain; the square, packed. So there was Paul, changing in public view outside a Whataburger like it was drumline days again.

"Do you want to come in Wal-Mart with us?" Paul asked Deni. "The only way we will ever part is when your're deployed," she said, placing her head on his shoulder. It's telling, the true love displayed between them. Absence only makes the heart grow fonder. A verse in Song of Solomon is in my mind...

Place me like a seal over your heart,
like a seal on your arm;
for love is as strong as death,
its jealousy unyielding as the grave.
It burns like blazing fire,
like a mighty flame.

Consecrated, divinely-rooted love is as secure as death, emotions and jealousy as final as the grave; secure: not subject to threat; certain to remain or continue safe and unharmed.

He beckons us to come, to draw near and find our hope, our joy in His unfailing love. Paul and Deni, may your love always grow, roots nourished by His streams of living water. May it strengthen in tough times, seeing the hope of eternity beyond any momentary and light affliction, those moments we are called to lay down our life, expectations or rights, and sacrifice short-term wants for long-term gain. The rewards are eternal...a crown of glory...treasure laid up in heaven.

Click the photo below for a slideshow of the most patriotic engagement pictures you may ever see. ;-)

Trip South Texas

We celebrated the life of Omi Da, who passed of natural cause at her home in Eagle Pass. She was 94. The older sister to my grandma Kay Keehn (mom's side), she had a fiery spirit - blunt yet wise with warmth. The family gathered June 15 outside her home and immaculate garden after a miraculous 24-hour storm brought historically low temperatures, passing just before the memorial.

Click the photo to view a slideshow.

 We visited Kiddie Park, the oldest children's amusement park, with Eva and Ethan, July 16. Click photo for slideshow.

Was able to squeeze in a last-minute shoot with Maya and Bert Muzquiz. Click photo for slideshow.

 

seed, oil, rain

That I would return to the viewfinder, the blog, the keyboard, is not surprising. What always surprises me is how God works to bring our talents and desires in alignment with his will. 

Sometimes he has to blind us before he can let us see. 

This blinding is spiritual, of course. This is so "the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you." We can humble ourselves before God does, but either way, he humbles us. He wants us to partner with him - obedience, surrender and trust are the paths of least resistance, even if it is uncertain and painful at times. 

I recall a season early in my faith where I could not think as deeply and richly about the world, as I once did having the atheistic mindset. "I saw beauty so vividly, everything as being so significant," I recall telling my brother-in-law, Erich. He mentioned Hebrews 4:12:

"For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart."    

God wanted to become the foundation and center from which my thoughts could flow. An old tree of relativism needed to be uprooted and a new one planted, one of the gospel, so I could bear fruit from that new truth. "A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit." Matthew 7:18

Chris Knox, friend and worship-leader at Calvary Chapel, described experiencing this dividing of the mind, in his life of music. "I was judging the worship leader for playing a certain way, when God told me (the Holy Spirit convicting his heart) "It's not about the music, Chris. I'm looking at their heart, and they are in the right place." I realized it wasn't about the ability to do something extremely well, but how much they loved God doing it. That really humbled me."

This reminded me of a quote by Brother Lawrence, a 17th century monastic known for his "Practice of the Presence of God": "We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.” 

I have to remind myself, so what if that photographer didn't take the best pictures or work as hard, if they are loving God, it pleases Him the same.

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us..." Eph 3:20

I've begun to pick up the camera again, the notebook, tools to be used for Him and through Him. I'm not sure what to expect, but it will be great because He is great.



"...but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful." Mark 4:19 Even godly desires can choke the word. "But only one thing is needed," Jesus said, and that is to cultivate a love for Him, being at His feet (Luke 10:41). Good soil is the humble and undivided heart.

"The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps." Pouring oil into jars after tearing a hole in the container, I'm reminded of Matt. 25 and how, as Christians, we must keep our lamps burning with the oil of gladness, of grace to avoid spiritual decay by the power of the Holy Spirit, in order to welcome the Bridegroom Jesus. What will make us unprepared is carelessness and negligence of that grace, that oil we never bought, hoping in our own efforts to serve\love\achieve without fuel from loving God first. Go get oil!
 

 

Texture on the barn window pane mimics the rain clouds. There has been a shift in perception about life in the barn. The more we cultivate the presence of God in a place, the more we can't help but think and feel Him upon our stay. Letting the Lord speak through my camera and the beautiful, good gifts He has given in this place, is one way to hear His voice and have His mind. The enemy wants to keep me underwhelmed. No!  :)

For Kimberly and Casey Straughn

 

Casey Straughn and Kimberly Allison will be married in February. Their story is one of promise - that God would use everything and anything. They were blinded of pride in order to see, to see each other as God does. Their love will forever grow toward each other as they continue to grow in love for God, whose love is limitless. Click the photo to view a slideshow of engagement photos I took (most of the time while holding a reflector!), as an assistant to my new photo buddy, Wade Matheny.

Cookies For Kids Day 2012

Click the photo to view a slideshow of favorites from the Cookies For Kids Day, held Oct. 6 at the Blue Baker in College Station. The event features cooking eating contests for all age groups, where "queen and king" of each group get a free cookie everyday for a year.

The Ranch

I was browsing for a good dish to hold us off during the week - ragu Bolognese - when I came across the recipe on RouxBe (roo-be) and the website asks you to commit to cooking like, "we needed to eat and so yeah, we did."

My buddy Jason Salas, now chef de cuisine, showed me how to cook the sauce during a week-long visit in Austin. He and my coworker at the bakery in H-E-B are celebrating a newborn.

The information is too tasty.

I entered my text into the "my story" segment on their website, proclaiming the goodness of el rancho: 


"It was during a week-long respite at The Ranch that I introduced my friend to the ease and enjoyment of cooking. We excavated the freezers full of wild game and fresh fish, to find ground venison, whole chickens, striped bass and giant links of deer jerky, vacuum packed and falling over everything. It was substance and efficiency we were after. I wrote out a menu and began forming a grocery list of needed vegetables and pasta - for a ragu bolognese. We ate better than ever off $35 that week. Here's the recipe.

If there was ever a gateway drug to cooking, mine was probably the grill. Beer chicken - our preferred PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon) exploding with the onions, garlic and habanero chili we stuffed in the can; a rolled pork tenderloin of roma tomatoes, basil and roasted garlic; potato rosti and ol' mashed spuds - mixed with leftover grilled stuffed mushrooms, jalapenos , and 2 "habees". (bacon, cream cheese, lime zest, pepper jack, more diced habanero). Leftovers went fast.

The ranch and all its animals - chickens, longhorns, cats and dogs and the usual bugs - afforded us the chance to experience more of "what you are made of," and reach for something new, like some more herbs. Cooking initiates a kind of dream state, where your creativity and appetite for feeling and conversation and good times unleashes.

I plan on eating well through college, saving as much money as I pursue photojournalism, to find out more about what I can create while getting back to the fundamentals of living down-to-earth."

Click the photo below to view a slideshow of favorites throughout the week:
"1990" and "love" is inscribed next to a hand print made shortly before the original "Gass" house changed hands with the Hects, who were vacationing on a cruise of Central-South America.

Fourth Fireworks

 Pre celebration grappling by the Hect brothers at the ranch.

"No Reservations: Lake Ray Roberts"

A dam stretches high above the edge of Lake Ray Roberts toward Isle du Bois state park, where I began my assignment photographing the lake for UNT's summer magazine, On The Record. 

The perfectly straight roadway promised any "Top Gear" fan like myself the urge to throw down the accelerator and push the ol' 77 Porsche to its top speed of 125mph - an urge quickly subdued as the beauty of one of Texas' major lakes (29,350 acres) arrested my eyes. I only wanted to pull over and watch the sun set. 

As if this sight wasn't relieving enough, I still worried about how to best sum up an enormous composition of nature, campers and fishermen, in a few photographs. A healthy fear keeps one's senses in check, and the dam-adrenaline-rush pushed me to make the most on an evening of sweat and sand between the cheeks, but with many pleasant surprises. 

I wasn't even in the water and I already reeked of wet dog - a pungent pooch greeting every visitor to the marina welcome center had his paws all over me, rubbing and drooling against my legs if I neglected to massage. Coupled with the dripping sweat, I needed relief, fast. 

Isle du Bois has a "beach," which is more like an enormous sand box for kids. I figured it a great way to show something unique - still not as impressive as the dam, but I remained optimistic. 

Jye Pechacek, 5, plays in the waterway he built at the beach off Lake Ray Roberts.

I approached a couple parents to affirm relationship to the children I was about to freak out - two retired couples: one family on their first RV trip, and the second who got them into the Forest Surveyor after a fascinating, awkwardly spiritual turn of events. More on that later.

So I simply talked with them about their kids, their time at the lake, and shared with them about myself and what I was hoping to accomplish there. This kind of no-agenda-conversation is a great way to really enjoy my job, instead of feeling like an imposition or letting the job, a.k.a. the beast, enjoy me.

I remember browsing through thank you cards one day to find one with a funny photo of a brown bear helping two countrymen push their truck to the road, quoting British cartoonist and author Ashleigh Brilliant:

"The best thing about needing help is that it's a good way to meet people."

This piece of wisdom has rung true many times for me, even and especially on my photo assignments. Photojournalists are hoping to make intimate pictures, to gain trust and solicit many a soul's song. At times, this can be difficult, but I've learned through much error that I cannot predetermine how people should allow me in. I should only be honest and upfront with my subjects, explaining the task at hand not in the way of "you need to tell me everything about your life," but rather "I need your help, to learn and share what is important to you, if that helps you." That's what you're there for. You're not there to try and be best friends with them (although if that happens naturally, cool), to waste their time in any way or treat them like they are your subjects, on your timeline. In those moments, however brief or long, you are serving them in some way, just as they are helping you.

But I digress.

Randomly, the family asked me if I wanted to join them for a spaghetti dinner at their RV camp. I immediately regretted the massive What-A-Burger I shoved down my carcass an hour before, and still worried about getting enough pictures as the evening waned. I declined, but mom insisted that "just in case, we're at lot #80. I make the best homemade spaghetti." Tempting.

Why I declined the first time, I don't know, but I doubt it mattered. Maybe mom would't have to anticipate a guest and rush to clean up the RV, and I wouldn't greatly influence the situation. Twenty minutes later, realizing what moments could be had from this opportunity, I rushed over to the campsite.

I arrived to find two RVs along the camping trail, the girls playing on the street and cooing at passing boys - "He was like, so smoking," said ten-year-old Ali Humphreys - a picnic table lined with red plaid as clothes hung from the hammock.

Sydnee Gailey, 13, rides her electric scooter as Ali Humphreys, 10, watches June 22 at Isle du Bois park at Lake Ray Roberts.

I chatted alone with mom, Donna Keith, inside the RV as she stirred spaghetti sauce. About her first time doing the RV-thing with her family, she said, "I was raised in Washington D.C. - everything was just so. It's different, but this is Texas, everything is different here." I couldn't tell a difference. She appeared a true, laid-back native.

Outside, under the awning strung with globe lights, poppa Doug Keith told me he grew up a "country boy on the farm," piloted two tours in Vietnam from age 19, and saw a good deal of the world to see the value in traveling where "there are still chores," things to learn and responsibilities to earn.

Donna Keith serves spaghetti in the RV at Isle du Bois. The family woke up at 7:30 a.m. after only a few hours of sleep to begin their first RV trip.

Ali Humphreys plays with her spaghetti. 

Matthew Magana, 2, eats with Jye Pechacek, 5, and Selena Mayana, 6.

Okay, so here's where things get crazy. The two couples are something like best friends, the Pettys
convincing the Keiths to get in the RV "community." How they became so close and were together on that evening to visit with me, however, is not as simple. Talking after a delicious meal of spaghetti - this is not your Italian grandmother's pasta, to be sure - with a slight taste of ketchup for kick, they shared their story like the cast of a dirty soap opera.

It all started a long time ago with their friend Jesse. "He was a womanizer," they quickly dispelled. Jesse left Helen Petty for Donna's best friend, who was not friends with Helen at the time. Helen's next husband Bill, who later died of cardiac arrest, was good friends with Doug Keith and they visited frequently in his final years.

Doug's wife, who was "very prophetic with dates," left him 30-some years the date they got married. Doug wasn't looking for a wife, but Donna knew her first husband the moment she saw him - at Bill's funeral. "Who is that handsome man," she recalls asking Helen at the time. "My uncle?!" This was getting interesting.

One evening, Helen, Doug and Donna were out shopping at the Garden Center to begin redecorate Doug's home. At the front of the store, goofing around, were Doug and Donna. "We were like two fifteen-year-olds," she said. Doug asked her, "Hey, let's get out of here," and the when he grabbed her hand, "it clicked." Donna knew all along, professing that God told her at the funeral, "this is your husband."

Around that time, Tony had been struggling to find a partner. "I did the eHarmony, Match.com, everything - nothing worked. I was fed up." One night, he was going down the contacts on his phone, deleting every female who wouldn't work, and landed on Helen. Since he was best friends with Jesse and cared for Helen, he called her up and they ended up chatting for hours. One night out to get a drink at the bar, and they knew.

"If we could think of a time in our life when we wanted to be happiest, it was toward the end," Tony said. "We are a blessing to each other. One piece of advice I have is to know when you know, when you know. Let God make the decision for you."

Donna and Doug agreed, noting that although their beliefs differed at the time, Doug came to have a true relationship with Christ through his wife of five years. "He smoked and drank...I prayed for him," she said. "When you allow God to work his way in you, you become all those things that you were supposed to be all along," Doug said.

This was "Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations" stuff for me - writer-chef travels without reservations, sharing meals with locals while a TV-film crew makes beautiful and honest visuals to accompany Bourdain's philosophical narration. I always wondered if I could do something like that. It struck me later that night that I did - naturally, unscripted - and I had a blast.

No event is coincidence, I am convinced, as that night spent with them - talking about life lessons, enthralled by their stories and sharing a meal together - was truly communion with fellow believers, brought together by the Spirit which Christ promised would "guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come." (John 16:13)

Jared Ivie hopes to catch some bass, below.

Kelsie Reynolds, 7, watches her dad Sawyer attach an earthworm to a hook

Sawyer Reynolds fishes with a headlamp as the moon sets.

A boat zooms across Lake Ray Roberts as the moon sets.

North Texas Daily - Spring 2012

The University of North Texas student newspaper began publishing in 1916 under the name "Campus Chat," becoming the "NT Daily" in 1970. In it's 96th year, I was honored to serve as the visuals editor and photographer. Click the photo below to view a slideshowcollection of published and unpublished works from the Spring.

TAMS student Nick Khil reacts to general studies senior James Cole (left) and public relations junior Jessica Papion as they tour campus in hazardous material suits (painter suits) and gas masks (from Downtown Mini Mall) while campaigning for the Association of Schools of Public Health. 

Easter 2012

It was a great surprise to spend Easter with some of the family this year - to those who couldn't make it: you were missed! Without a car, I traveled via greyhound to Bryan, and further to San Antonio after the celebrations to see my dad, who was recovering from brain surgery. From a promising prognosis until his current recovery, the whole process has been quick and relieving. Pops is strong and has used the event to be even stronger in the spirit. 

sky like water; fire