Yngrid and her Family

The day was twinged with just the right amount of pandemonium. Isn’t that the way the day after Christmas usually exists?  At least partially chaotic (wrapping paper to tidy, gifts to find new homes for, leftovers to inhale) and especially when everyone is finally home for Christmas after being scattered across the continent?   For Yngrid and her family, the mayhem was all my fault:  looking just right for the posterity of the photographs is, of course, critical (this crew accomplishes that part with ease; let’s face it).

I had been flying across the country when we made a plan.  Standing in the noisy, crowded Seattle airport, in fact, made me miss the initial call and finding a quiet, un-interrupted corner to call Yngrid back was no small feat. 😉  But we did it.  We coordinated schedules, planned a Christmas-week photo session, and that was that.

It wasn’t until I made it to their North Carolina home that the small world shrunk a few more sizes:  with similar experiences in Asia,  connections with Africa, and the obvious North Carolina charm, our lives were colliding with mutual joy. And then came the most astonishing collision of them all:  my new home in British Columbia.

So there I am. Photographing this fun-loving, intelligent, laughing family in my (now former) home town in North Carolina while swapping Vancouver stories and Granville Island experiences, connecting with a shared understanding of my new hometown in British Columbia.

It’s one of those delightfully unexpected, but ridiculously refreshing reminders that I am not alone and that God directs my paths exactly, perfectly, precisely.  When I feel overwhelmed at the enormity of moving to a new country, I am reminded that I’m not the first person to do this.