Jumping with cactus

This post has been days in the making, words and statements trying to meld together to create thoughts and paragraphs that somehow in their collective form express a whirl wind of thoughts and emotions.

I see the world in mini little images that dance behind my eyes, images that convey a moment, an emotion, a story.

I love telling these stories, capturing the stories I see happening around me, and following the example of God and creating or in my case exposing the beauty in the world around us. Days that are full of stories are days that my heart races, my lips fight to not smile, and my step has an extra skip to it.

The image now dancing behind my eyes is that of a wonderfully sunny fall day. The air is crisp enough to make your skin feel alive, yet warm enough to make you want to bath in it’s embrace. The sun reflects off the grass blades to show their magnificent shades of green and the fireflies still linger in the air to stir delight and wonder in your mind.

Now in the center of this magical experience is placed a trampoline. A trampoline with its net stretched to that perfect tightness.

As you slip your shoes off you feel the cool dampness of the grass in between your toes. You awkwardly roll on to the net, smelling the hint of aluminum from frame and as you tumble into the center of the net press your nose tight against the messed bottom breathing deep and looking thorough what seems to be a million tiny little holes, imagining this must be how a bee sees the world.

Your tumble moves you to your bottom, then your knees, and then into a bounce, a rhythmic rocking up and down. Momentum builds and your knees start to leave the netting a little, you rock harder, the momentum grows, and your knees now start to clear the net by a few inches. Now by a foot. You hold out your arms finding your balance, while at the same time throwing them into the rhythm, discovering on one bounce that you now have enough space the drop your feet down, your feet touch the net, and launch you even further into the air. You feel the air creeping up as you hurl your flailing body towards the ground only to be rewarded with the rush of the exploding launch up into the cool night air.

The tiny dots of fireflies now blur pass your racing eyes as car lights to a camera lens. You jump, you enjoy, life has an excitement, a movement, a momentum, a bounce.

Yet as you jump you remember, the higher you go the closer your feet come to the ground. The higher you go the more you enjoy, yet the closer to the unknown danger beneath you approach. Just what is underneath this meshy net you now explode out of?

You ask “could there possibly be a cactus, under the trampoline?” You don’t know, but you do know the higher you jump the greater the risk of meeting this said feared plant and it’s friendly pointed handshakes grows.

The jumping is so much fun, it fills your lungs and gives life to the soul, yet with each new bounce grows the fear of what’s unknown, what you might find in your new found movement.

This is my current image.

In March Pearl and I started a little momentum with this crazy idea called “pearl street photography”. The momentum has grown, and continued and now we find ourselves moving from our knees to our feet, moving from this being a part time side business to now my main focus, my main income.

It’s life giving, yet the fear of what’s underneath, what could be coming, what is in the unknown is life stealing.

We don’t get off the trampoline because we fear a miss placed cactus, yet many of us never jump towards what fills our daydreams and causes our mind to race because of what we fear in the unknown.

Well, as of next Tuesday September 29th, I will be officially fully self employed, or unemployed (call it what you like).

And the excitement of this is overwhelming. To be able to create, tell stories, invest my days and life where I long to, to find the rhythms and bounce I desire to call life. Yet the fears are real, the unknowns are not misplaced cactuses under a kids trampoline, and these fears fight for my attention as much as the dreams.

Yet I must not give into them. I must heed their warnings, their possibilities yet not live in the wake of their fear and threat. I must keep jumping, I must enjoy the crisp air, I must not loose the wonder of fireflies and night skies.

Cause in this jumping not only does my life come to life, but my faith wakes up and ask what it’s made of, my faith finds a movement of it’s own, and it leaves it’s fingerprints on all it touches.

So may we all be willing to jump with cactuses, or cacti, or whatever else it is we might fear.

To jump or not to jump, that is the question, and as for me and my house we have chosen to jump.