I just created an inspiration wall door in my room recently. I looked through all these quotes, verses and photographs that I’ve saved from finding online and collaged them. It’s rather pretty I think. Buuuut the decor of my room is not the point of this post, so I’ll get back to my fantastic home decorating skills another time.

My life is plagued with comparison. Aren’t all of ours? I feel like this is something I’m always learning. We can hardly look at someone else without seeing how we measure up next to them. We heap on piles of characteristics to our mounds of pride and insecurity. In small group a couple weeks ago, one of my friends was talking about how discontent she’s been recently. She knows how blessed she is, wonderful husband, safe home, flexible job, but somehow it just isn’t enough. Amen sister.

I think it’s easy for me to browse other photographer’s blogs and website and jump from learning from their experience and being inspired by their work to comparing myself to them. “I wish I had as many bookings as them. I have to take a picture just like his. Gosh her and her husband are so cute. Whoa, she’s published in that magazine?” I walk away from my computer feeling discontent, over-criticizing my work and not satisfied with where I am. This is so, so, SO unhealthy.

So here’s what I’m learning right now. God has me right  here, right now, for a glorious and beautiful purpose. This season is not a waiting room for when my life really starts. I think sometimes I get frustrated with kind of “transition” period I’m in right now. Britney Spears knows what I’m talking about.

[JUST KIDDING. I just really wanted to incorporate that song in this post somehow even though it’s mostly irrelevant. Apologies for my love of 90s pop music.]

Anyway. This life I sometimes feel like I’m waiting for started 22 years ago. Any time I spend sulking in dissatisfaction is wasting a beautiful and undeserved gift. He is my satisfaction. He is my contentment. He is my everything.

Psalm 37:4 says “Delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” I desire solid and lasting friendships, marriage to a man who fiercely loves me, a career where I can do what I love, and the skill to take beautiful pictures that show off God’s most beautiful creations. This verse does not mean that I’ll get all of those things, even though they’re all wonderful. It means that reveling in the Lord will fill the deep down heart desires behind all those external things. The comfort of friendship, being fully known and fully loved, the passion of a calling are all found in Him first. No friendship will be a secure as Christ, no man can ever know me as well as God and love me as fully, no picture I take will be as beautiful as what He has done with my heart.

So those pictures hanging on my door are beautiful and I love them, but taking a million Pinterest-worthy, award-winning, published-on-all-the-greatest-blogs-ever pictures will not satisfy me like my Savior will. Fact.

So, a note to myself: Emily, be here. Be here. Be more than satisfied with where you are right now. Adore this place. Have confidence in what you are doing. Embrace right now. Pray for tomorrow. Live today. Love this season.

**Wondering where all these lovely pictures came from? Go check out my Pinterest boards and you’ll find them all. Many came from Jose Villa, Lara Casey/MTH, Amelia Lyon or my Instagram feed.