One August day in 1996, I met a boy named Jimmy Kyker. I was a freshman at Belhaven College and he was a junior. We had mutual friends so we spent a good bit of time together, but it wasn't until early spring that I would go against everything I believed in and ask a boy out on a date (thanks for the nudge, Sadie Hawkins!). It worked and 18 months later, on August 1, 1998, we got married and our story began.

We had six addresses in seven years, six babies in ten years, and six million good and hard, hilarious and heart-breaking, sweet and not-so-sweet, exhilarating and exhausting moments in between. We decide major life changes with Rock, Paper, Scissors (welcome, baby #1!), being surprised with a coffee-to-go is a shared love language, and our motto is, "This isn't crazy, this is our life" (said with a deep breath and a spark of determination). The truth is, while it is our life, it is also crazy. 

In 2011, I was expecting our sixth baby and the crazy was threatening to do me in. I'm a Type A perfectionist and, well, there's just not a whole lot of room for those types of mothers who also value enjoying life with their people. I'm a documenter by blood (my mom knew how to blitz through a disposable camera like nothing; chopped heads and triple prints!), and that year I learned to find joy in what C.S. Lewis called “the tiny, heartbreaking commonplace”. For 365 days, I took one picture a day of an ordinary, unglamorous moment in time. By the end of that year my eyes had begun to see in a new way and gratitude for the incredible blessings that overflowed from my kind and loving God had slowed me down. I called that project {enJoy}, and that was when I knew that I would always tell our stories - mostly to myself - through my lens. 

The tiny, commonplace routines of our days add up to a lifetime of connection. The song I sang at each diaper change, the mug I poured his coffee into, and the silly bedtime snuggle talks are the moments I don't want to forget. They are the ones that connect our hearts to each other and make us who we are together. They are the stories I want to remember. 

When I’m an old grandmother looking back on my days, I know it will be the tiny, heartbreaking commonplace that will bring the tears of gratitude for this rich, full life that God has given me. This is my story, my giving of thanks.

“The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.”  

~ GK Chesterton