Shawna Herring Blog

Isn’t life amazing? Can I just say that God works in mysterious ways. A few months ago I began to realize that I was getting overly absorbed in my career. I could spend 8-10 hours at the computer and still be irritated when I had to stop and do something else. There was no balance so I began to ask God to help me re-prioritize things. I mean, I love photography but that is not the purpose of my life and sometimes, we can confuse the fact that our life does not exsist to serve our business but rather our business exsists to serve and provide for our lives. I tend to be a little obsessive about some things and photography was getting the majority of my time. Now I have been married for 15 months and we both came into the marriage with a child. I have an 8 year old daughter and he has a 6 year old son. ( yes, I know, they are both ours, but I am setting the stage here ) and I can’t tell you how many times we have been asked if we were planning on having a child together. The answer has always been “no”. We just didn’t see it in our plans and we took the necessary precautions to follow through. Now, I am a firm believer that each and every one of us has a purpose on this earth. And that purpose is not our jobs. Our jobs are our function, but the purpose of our lives is to bring glory to God and to invest ( essentially, MULTIPLY ) into the lives of others. It can be our children, our spouses, our friends, neighbors, co-oworkers…but we are meant to have relationships with people so that we can grow and help others to grow. It might seem like I am getting off of the subject here, but if this is what I believe, then how did I get so obsessed with my job? Funny how things sometime happen without our noticing. Remember that I began to ask God to help me get my priorities straight? Well, to bring the story up to speed, Steve and I have just found out that we are pregnant! Yep. Due in November. Everyone asks, ” Were you trying?” the answer is “no” but then again…I am reminded that we are not the ones that are ultimately in charge of things and if you ask God to do something, you better be prepared for Him to do it in a way that you might not expect.
We are still walking around in a bit of shock. This will certainly change my focus a little bit. ( I asked for it ) If anything, it will force me to streamline my workflow and who knows…maybe we will put in a studio and lean more towards baby portraits??
I’m excited about the possibilities and I know that since God is in charge, He will certainly be able to work out all the details.
Here is a picture of Madison when we told her the news. We took her out to eat and gave her a stuffed puppy with a book called “baby on the way”, she loved the puppy and just began reading the book as if it were any other book. Then I began commenting on things the book said, like ‘your mommy can be very tired/thirsty, and sometimes feel queasy’ and after a few minutes, she looked up with those big eyes and asks ,’are you going to have a baby?’ ‘Yes,’ we said and she was so happy, she cried. And so did we.

Change is always happening, isn’t it? There are some things that we would prefer to stay the same but it never does,despite our efforts. Life is just too short for things to stay the same. I’ve just switched to Blogger, something new, because if looks so much cleaner than my previous blog. Bear with me while I learn how to use it. Feels like starting over, doesn’t it?