This place.

This weather has had a perfect feel, and the colors have started to bloom. I walk around with a new stride. I’ve never felt so fitted for just moving to a new place. As I walk through the streets I begin to look back on the times that got me here, the times I wanted to give up, wanted to fade away, wanted to leave the puzzle unfinished, but something in me kept pushing me through to the next moment. Although I am here, this isn’t my final destination, but where I am now has taken time. This place has taken sacrifice and prayer. This place has taken all my energy and heart, my passion and motivation. This place did not come easy. This place I find myself in took many of my tears and millions of my moments. It took patience and perseverance to reach it, with friends in the foundation of pillars holding me up to reach my place. Good things never come easy. I chose not to get lost in the process. When things looked impossible, boring, or unmotivating, my inner purpose lead me to believe something was up ahead.
I have such a rich taste of what it feels like to fully be alive living in this place. It was hard not get distracted by wildflowers and secret doorways along the way. Some steps I chose to take left me with heartache but it has only added to the richness of the purpose. It is not time to throw down the handle, but pick up the reign in the place I now stand.
And let us not lose heart and grow weary and faint in acting nobly and doing right, for in due time and at the appointed season we shall reap, if we do not loosen and relax our courage and faint.
Galatians 6:9

The Heart Trusts.

I trust him the way I chose to trust my Dad when he spoke to me as a little girl. If he told me I could be a fairy, I became a fairy, If he told me we were going to the carnival, we were going to go to the carnival, and if he told me "Leah, we are going to fly to the moon" then we were going to fly to the moon. Nothing was impossible.

"... I trust him. I trust that he will inspire the one who matches my heart to find me. That something within him, no matter where he is, no matter how far apart or close we are, no matter our family history or where we grew into who we are now, no matter how different we may be or look from one another, that he will pursue me. He will find me because he trusts God just as much as I do. He trusts and hopes for that moment when his heart hears my name and the moment will come when he and I will finally be, us three. He trusts that his heart will one day find me because he is looking through the one who knows himself more than he does. The one who knows the best for him. He will find me through his creator, and I will wait in hope knowing and trusting that my dad wants what’s best for me.

It’s such a mystery"

photo by Tim Walker

The heart of a child

The heart of a child..

The
Innocence of a
child.

The faith of
a child.

The belief in
things
unseen, seen
by a child.

The other day while babysitting I noticed the way children react to things that are evil. A cartoon came on with an evil looking character, and the child seemed appalled and started to move away from the screen as if she didn't want to look at it anymore. This made me realize how innocent we are coming into this world.

Innocent: free from moral wrong, not corrupted.

As children we enjoy innocent things, not things that are scary. It is over time that we become more immune to the things of this world and the innocents beings to slip away.

This child's reaction awakened me to the pure form of innocents I once withheld, and the way which we were created.

There is something so sweet about a childlike spirit. The way they trust you, and the way they will believe in or anything you say, and the way they are so pure and innocent. This is how I believe God is calling us to be. To trust him and to believe the things he says with all our heart without any walls or guards, to find our innocence in him who is the one who created us with it from the begining. I want the heart of a child.

“Field of Dreams”
Vogue, November 2008
photographer: Mario Testino
Natalia Vodianova