Because I was able to start a few weeks before the summer crowds arrived, Doug, the manager, decided to train me to run the store, so that I could help teach the other new hires that hadn’t yet arrived, and also act as an assistant manager, giving him a chance to break away from the shop every now and then, whenever the stress of working in a tourist hotspot during the summer became too much for the older man to bare.

Just as Doug predicted, on the 31st of May, five college students from Europe, having just arrived in the country on various flights that morning and settled into their apartments, came looking for work. We hired them all: an Irish boy named Charlie; two Irish girls, a tall blonde named Christine and a more reserved red-head named Colette; a very serious Romanian boy name Bram and his girlfriend, a truly beautiful young lady called Catalina, who was venturing beyond the borders of her homeland for the first time. All six of us were the same age, give or take a year or two, and we all had the same goal in mind for the summer — enjoy living at the coast as much as possible, and try to save at least a couple hundred dollars to take back to school in August.

By the second week of June, the summer business was in high gear and our store stayed packed well into the night. One Thursday evening, Doug was burning up the cash register taking orders faster than most of our sun-bleached customers could spit them out, while Catalina and I were doing our best to keep the ice cream coming. I noticed that Catalina had been drawn over to an angry customer upset because the sundae she had made wasn’t exactly what he had ordered. His frustration didn’t phase her a bit, and she told him that he could keep the incorrect sundae and she would make him another right away. At this point, my assertive personality, eager to prove myself as a straight-laced businessman, despite my apron and ice cream scoop, forced me to step in and tell the complaining customer that, although we would quickly fill his order as he expected, I would need to discard the compromised bowl of ice cream. Catalina gave me a sideways glance, took the ice cream from my hand and slid it back over to the customer as she told me that we couldn’t let it go to waste; it was an honest mistake, and the right mix of ice cream would be coming up soon.

I stood firm and said yes, we would make a new sundae but this first one had to go to the trash. From a business perspective, this is a matter of consistency, protecting one’s image and resources. Customers may intentionally place an “incorrect” order in an attempt to exploit hospitality and steal free food; employees may intentionally prepare the wrong item as well, using the “mistake” as an excuse to set the product aside and enjoy free food on a break later on during their shift. Consistently disposing of mis-made orders is the only way to avoid either of these practices.

Of course, I didn’t explain any of this to Catalina, or to the customer. What ended up happening was Catalina ran to the back of the store to cry while I ended up filling the rush of orders and getting the customers in and out as quickly as possible. As the line died down, I went to the back to apologize to Catalina and explain the reasoning behind the policy. Before I got halfway through my apology, she broke through her tears and interrupted me. “Of course if it is the rule, it is the rule. That is fine. But I didn’t know, and you shouldn’t have corrected me in front of the customer,” she said. “It is not very nice, and it is not beautiful.”

I was dumbstruck. I realized just how bad I had goofed everything up. I let business get in the way of people, and that’s not good for the bottom line, no matter where you draw it.

As I drove home that night, I kept hearing her words over again in my head. “It is not very nice, and it is not beautiful.” Not beautiful? That didn’t make much sense. I started to think about the process one goes through in learning a second language, as Catalina had done in preparation for coming to the United States. A simple definition of “beautiful” could be “to look very good.” If this was the way she understood the word, then it would make more sense. I know what someone means when they tell me my actions don’t look good, and I knew that my management that night didn’t look very good at all; not to the customers, to my coworkers, or, in retrospect, to myself.

Though the literal meaning is nearly the same, the phrasing makes a big difference for us native English speakers. When making decisions that impact our relationships with others, do we simply seek to do what looks good, or do we truly try to make every aspect of our lives beautiful?

Absolutely, undeniably, beautiful. That’s the lesson I learned from working at the ice cream shop.

This morning we headed over to Pullen Park to check on the progress of the renovation work and get some spring pictures of Samuel. The park closed in 2009, and was supposed to reopen this spring with a new enclosure for the carousel, new playground equipment and some updated facilities. The projected completion date has been pushed back to “Late Fall 2011,” according to signs at the park, but there is still a lot of work to get done. The lower half of the park is completely gone. Both playgrounds, gone. Carousel, gone; Train station, gone; Fountain and garden at the main entrance, gone; Sidewalks, gone; Peddle boats, gone; Lake, gone; It’s all gone. Seriously. We hung out at the picnic area at the top of the park and got some great pictures of Samuel, then we headed over to Chavis Park, where renovations have not yet begun, so that Samuel could sit in a swing for the first time. He loved it.

This is a great time of year to get new pictures of the kids, family portraits, engagement photos, or just some fun personal shots to treat yourself to. Book your session today!

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For there is more to life than food, and more to the body than clothing. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn, yet God feeds them. How much more valuable are you than the birds! And which of you by worrying can add an hour to his life? So if you cannot do such a very little thing as this, why do you worry about the rest? Consider how the flowers grow; they do not work or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed like one of these! And if this is how God clothes the wild grass, which is here today and tomorrow is tossed into the fire to heat the oven, how much more will he clothe you, you people of little faith!

Luke 12:22-28 (NET)

Last week on one of the days Samuel and I spent at home together, we had the rare opportunity of watching a miracle unfold before our eyes. I call it rare, because seldom do I take the time to be still and enjoy the many small miracles that happen every day, in the ordinary moments of life. Lately, I feel that I have been so busy trying to get on with the work of life, that I have failed to truly live in the moment. Monday morning, my frazzled scheduled was wiped clean as the elegant simplicity of a flower reminded me of the value each moment holds.

We have a tulip tree growing outside of our kitchen window at the corner of the house. Normally, this tulip tree causes me nothing but frustration. It grows up over our house and drops leaves right into the gutter, which I have to clean out. It grows into our kitchen window and smudges the glass, until I trim it up every few months, knowing it will grow right back. It makes it nearly impossible to keep a neat flowerbed around our kitchen in the summer, when its dense foliage blocks the morning sun. For the other nine months out of the year, the tulip tree is completely bare — a messy tangle of branches and twigs that I’m tempted to cut down each winter because it just doesn’t do anything for our house. But for two weeks out of the year, it is covered with beautiful blossoms that pop up overnight, as if someone gingerly sculpted each one from a block of soft marble swirled with layers of pink and white stone. It’s beautiful, but its beauty is short lived. Next week, its flowers will lay wilted on the ground, replaced with thick green leaves that keep the tree — and my yard — covered throughout the spring and summer.

The tree works hard all year, growing thicker and faster than anything else on our lot, just to spend two weeks in bloom. Last Friday, there wasn’t a blossom on our tulip tree. Sunday afternoon, it was covered in little green buds. Monday morning, as Samuel and I ate breakfast, each bulb, one by one, started to pop open. By the end of the day, the tree was decked out in full colors, basking in the sunlight and radiating with a splendor that surpassed the glory of even the most stately king.

There is a lot I still have to learn from my tulip tree; Things like patience, faithfulness, focus and determination. I find it so easy to get anxious, especially now as I near the midpoint of this semester, and in a few weeks, the midpoint of my M.Div. degree at Campbell. I have learned so much and felt my call to ministry affirmed again and again, but in many ways, I am more confused than ever about what path my life will take after school. I am anxious about the future, but I am reminded that in the end, God is faithful, and my job is to be faithful to the many opportunities for ministry and preparation that I am given each day.

It’s probably not much of a stretch to think that my tulip tree can get a little anxious in November when I bring out the chainsaw and start cutting back the brush around the house, but it keeps growing, and I remember what it will look like the first week in March when the time is just right and all of that hard work pays off in a beautiful way.

Life goes on for the both of us, but how I long to have the faith of a tulip tree.

It’s official. I have failed as a parent. I have gotten my son a cell phone.

He doesn’t even have underwear yet, and he’s got a cell phone of his very own. He can’t talk, but he can make a long distance call.

Shortly after we got married, Kristen and I agreed we wouldn’t get our children cell phones until they were old enough to (legally) drive a car. That’s when we got phones, and that’s the point that it seems like they go from being a convenient toy to a useful tool. We knew this would be hard to stick to. Our younger siblings and cousins all got phones as adolescents. More than that, the fundamental nature of phones have completely changed in the three years since we first made that statement. It seems that kids don’t use phones for talking or texting so much as for checking Facebook, updating Twitter feeds, browsing the internet and playing games. The biggest change, of course, is that I’m no longer a passive observer critiquing general theories of parenting. For better or worse, I’m a real dad now.

Over the past few weeks, Samuel has gotten much more interested in exploring the house, picking things up and playing with them (read: stuffing stuff in his mouth). While he has an ample collection of toys, his favorite things to grab are telephones. Our house phone looks nothing like a cell phone, and my iPhone is a different animal altogether, but they’re all the same to Samuel. He’ll look over a whole pile of toys and crawl across the room to get his hands on a phone. Isn’t it weird how, even at nine months, kids know exactly what they’re not supposed to have?

This site is designed to be a little more welcoming and professional looking than the last one. It is also fully HTML5 compliant, which means audio, video and image galleries should work on all mobile platforms, and work better and more consistently on traditional OS. Hopefully this site will do a better job marketing me as a freelance photojournalist, wedding, portrait and commercial event photographer. If anyone needs pictures taken for anything, I want to be the one to do them! Let me know what you think. Feedback is the surest way to make things better, but hopefully this is a good start.

I love working with WWII veterans! It’s a stereotype, I know, but all of the veterans from that era I have had the opportunity to meet during my time at The Record and The Sanford Herald have just been incredible, multi-faceted men who have worked hard to make the most of every opportunity they’ve had. Mr. Denning is no exception. In high school, he picked up an interest in electronics and photography, setting up a full dark room in his parents’ home. He worked as a shipyard electrician before enlisting in the Army and participating in this unique project. After the war, he worked in Military Intelligence at the Pentagon, then moved to Denver to be near his wife who was undergoing treatment for tuberculosis. When she was transferred to a hospital in Richmond, he returned to Washington for a short while before leaving the military to work with the North Carolina prison system. He later took a job as an electrical engineer for the Department of Public Instruction and ended up retiring as assistant controller. After that long career of public service, Mr. Denning started his own company and worked another two decades before retiring for good. In the past year, he has published two books, married Jenny (his first wife, Mary, died several years ago) and worked hard to recover full mobility and speech after suffering a stroke. I enjoyed getting to know just a little bit about his fascinating life during the hours we had together.