Epilogue

When I think of tassels, I think of celebration. When tassels are involved, we are celebrating life and its joys. I also think of elegance and splendor, which is so appropriate for the King of Kings. To me, tassels signify abundance: living a life that is embellished and full of surprises. Like Ephesians 3:20-21 states, God is able to do exceedingly, abundantly above and beyond all that we can ask or think. He wants us to live a life embellished with richness and excitement.

God allowed me to go to Guyana and Honduras, and he has blessed my life with so many more opportunities of sharing his love and his creation with others. He continues to bless me daily, and I am so grateful for the opportunities ahead.

I hope that this epilogue will never be completed. After all, the story doesn’t end here. I hope that God will allow me to continue to travel the world, and I hope that I will be able to continue to bring the world to you in my art. I hope that you will seek the embellished life and that you will allow God to be the author of your story. He has so much love and joy to offer you, if you will only seek His will for your life.

The Story of Tassels (Continued)

I arrived home from Spain safe and sound, and with an alarming amount of pictures on my computer (which is still telling me constantly that my startup disk is almost full). I finished college, adding another trip to Honduras and a trip to Nicaragua to my repertoire of travel in the process. Now officially, a “world traveller”, I was poised to jump at any opportunity that came my way. Last year, I had the opportunity to visit both Honduras and Guyana during the summer. This time however, I had just entered graduate school and I was also beginning a new career as a tour coordinator for a motorcoach tour operator company (no surprise there). I wanted to go on both of the trips that were available to me, but I was lacking the funds for both. I began to brainstorm fundraising ideas. With a little help (ok a lot) from my Sunday School class and other church friends, we participated in fundraisers from selling baked goods to golf hole sponsorships.

Although we now had plenty of fundraisers planned, I was looking for another way to raise some money so that our team would have plenty of funds to travel to Guyana. I had originally planned to hold a bake sale in the church gym, following on the tails of the muffins and doughnuts that we had sold in Sunday School for the past few months. Then, another idea was presented that we might have a craft fair along with it. In my church, the women’s group hosts a vendor bazaar every year right before Christmas which usually does fairly well, so I thought that it was worth a try. I knew that I could bake something, but I had no idea of what kinds of crafts that I could create. It isn’t that I am not capable of being crafty, but usually those skills are developed long before they will be needed on the fly to sell to the general public. Still, I made a valiant effort of brainstorming ideas of what I could possibly make that might resonate with people enough for them to be interested in taking it home with them. And so enters into the story my brilliant mother.

I should note that up until this moment the value of my pictures was to me alone. I liked them, and I thought that some of them were really good, but I hadn’t yet begun to understand that God had provided me with an actual talent that I could use for his glory.

As I was talking with my mother she suggested that I try to sell some of my photography. I had never even considered that what I did was photography. Photography is an art form, a skilled balance of lighting and focus and position. I just took pictures. My brother was the photographer. However, both my mother and my brother assured me that my picture taking was, in fact, photography and that it should be shared. So, with a little advice, I researched the best printing options and began selecting a small sample of my work to be put on display.

There still remained one problem: if I was going into business, that business needed a name. I could just go with my name and put photography at the end, but I felt like this venture was bigger than me, and it needed the appropriate title. As I was reading my daily Bible reading, I came across Numbers 15:37-41, where God instructs the Israelites to wear tassels on their garments in order to signify that they are his people, and that they will be faithful to Him. I felt God speaking to me; this is what he wanted from me. He wanted me to show that I was connected to Him. He wanted me to understand that what I did was only a reflection of His creation which He allowed me to capture so that I could share the joy that it brought into my life. He wanted me to share Him with the world and thus bring him glory. And so, Tassels was born.

 

The Story of Tassels

This has been a long time coming, and I apologize for anyone who has happened to show interest in this so far unorganized and hardly up-to-date blog. This is the story of how Tassels began. I suppose the story really begins when I was four years old and I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior and the author of my life, but I will skip forward a few years to my junior year of high school.

Since I was a little girl I have loved the Spanish language, with no idea why. During my junior year of high school, I made the decision that one day (my junior year of college to be specific) I would travel abroad to Spain and live there for a semester. I did not know how I was going to accomplish this, but I made it a goal and I trusted that God would lead me there if He saw fit.

I had never traveled outside of the country until college (although I had visited both Hawai’i and Alaska during high school) and so during my freshmen year I decided to embark on my first adventure: Honduras. That trip was indeed an invaluable experience, and it opened my eyes to the world outside of my cozy, comfy bubble. During this trip, like any good tourist, I took pictures.

I returned to Honduras a second time the next summer, and spent an entire month there instead of only 10 days. After that trip I knew that I could live in a foreign country, away from all that I had known, but I still did not know how to get there. I began to research ways of getting to Spain.

After a long process of maneuvering schedules, credits, and applications (with the help of very patient and accommodating professors) I was on my way to Spain. I cannot be so prideful as to claim the credit for the chance to go. God ordained my every step and provided me with the opportunities that I needed. He guided my path through the labyrinth of paperwork and red tape, and even provided me with the funds that I needed to go, through way of my Grandmother, who graciously included me in her will. She loved to travel, and I think that she would have been proud to know that she was able to assist in providing this opportunity for me. Later, my grandfather and my aunt would visit me in Spain, and we all felt her there in spirit.

Again, I made a conscious effort to photograph everything, knowing that my life needed to be documented in some way, so that I would not forget all that I saw and tasted and felt. I created a blog to further capture my daily experiences, which can be found here. Although I took many photographs of the various places that I visited in those four months, I still had no idea that God was working in my life in ways which I could not fathom.