My story, so far

1955 — 1973

A West Tennessee beginning

I was born in 1955 and grew up in rural West Tennessee, in a family connected to the land and the rhythms of farm life. My father was one of nine brothers, so “family” meant a yard full of people. Eisenhower was president. Television was still new in a lot of homes. We didn’t have one. Two years later the Soviets launched Sputnik, and America decided it had better get serious about science.

My childhood ran through one of the most turbulent stretches in modern American history. I was eight when Kennedy was assassinated — even children understood that something enormous and frightening had happened. The civil rights movement was changing the country. Vietnam was escalating.

But ordinary life kept going. The cows had to be milked, the chickens had to be fed, and the woodbox had to be filled. Farm life makes cause and effect impossible to argue with. Weather matters. Timing matters. Maintenance matters. You cannot talk a crop into growing and you cannot negotiate with the seasons. I suspect my lifelong interest in systems started right there.

In July of 1969, when I was thirteen, Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. The whole country stopped and looked in the same direction. Technology wasn’t science fiction anymore. Human beings had crossed a boundary that was supposed to be impossible. That feeling — that the world can change enormously inside one lifetime — never left me.

I started working in a grocery store around fifteen and stayed about four years. Show up. Pay attention. Serve the customer. Notice what needs doing. Understand that every task is connected to someone else’s work. Those lessons never really left either.

1998 — 2010

Loss, change, and starting over

My mother died in 1992, while most of my working and family life was still moving at full speed. The years that followed brought a major rupture in my personal life, and a season of rebuilding that took considerably longer than I expected.

I don’t tell this part as a tidy redemption story, because real life is rarely tidy. There were painful consequences and there are things I’d do differently. Those years shaped how I think about relationships, forgiveness, time, and the damage that accumulates when important things are left unattended. That’s as much as belongs on a public page — the people in my life didn’t choose to have their history published, and it’s not mine to publish.

What I will say is that I met Cathy in 2002, and she has been an important part of my life for more than two decades. Ours has included love, distance, responsibility, caregiving, hard conversations, and the ordinary work of trying to understand another human being.

2011 — 2016

A heart, a camera, and a different way of seeing

In July of 2011 I had quadruple bypass surgery. A heart event turns an abstract idea — mortality — into something immediate and personal. Recovery became part of the story, along with a much sharper awareness of the consequences of habits accumulated over many years.

Around that same season, photography became more than a casual interest. In 2012, while photographing a sunrise at Old Hickory Lake, I had a moment I still remember as deeply spiritual. I sensed the Lord saying, Child, you are my favorite creation. I didn’t hear that as God valuing me above anyone else. I heard it as a revelation of how personally and completely God loves each of us.

In the summer of 2013, I met William Lee Golden of the Oak Ridge Boys while shooting sunsets at the lake. Watching him work taught me two things that reached well beyond photography. First, there’s usually a show after the show — the best light often comes once everyone else has packed up and gone. Second, remember to look behind you. You can get so locked onto the view you came for that you miss something extraordinary happening at your back.

Then, on the 17th of March 2016, I went to my first Clarksville Regional Open Shoot — CROS — and the whole thing turned again. Up to that point photography had been a solitary pursuit: me, a tripod, and whatever the sky decided to do. CROS was a monthly gathering of photographers, models, and hair and makeup artists, all of us there to practice, build a portfolio, and build a network.

I went to learn lighting. What I actually got was people. Ten years on I’m still friends with several of them, and the friendships have outlasted the club — CROS itself is no longer active. It’s the reason portrait work became a serious part of what I do.

Faith

From rules toward grace

Christian faith has been present my whole life, but my understanding of it has changed considerably. My background is a strong belief in the oneness of God, the message of Acts 2:38, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and the continuing work of spiritual gifts. I still hold convictions that grew out of that foundation.

What has shifted is the center of gravity. I’ve moved from a heavily rule-centered understanding of holiness toward a much deeper understanding of grace. With time, I developed a much stronger relationship with God. I see Scripture not merely as information but as the living Word of God — something I can read many times over and still encounter freshly. I study seriously, though I make no claim to being a theologian or a Bible scholar.

Cathy passed along a line, attributed to Bill Johnson, that has become important to me: Never visit the past without the Holy Spirit. When I revisit my past alone, I fall into regret, accusation, or self-justification. When I invite the Holy Spirit into that visit, the past becomes a place of truth, grace, instruction, and healing.

That doesn’t erase regret. I have plenty — about education, about building a stronger network, about health and self-discipline, about relationships and opportunities not taken. But grace changes what regret is allowed to do. Regret can teach me. It doesn’t get to name me.