There’s something on our hearts. We need to take back Sunday for our personal lives & for our family. We love love love photographing such important moments in others’ lives! It brings us such fulfillment & pleasure! That’s why it’s difficult to say no sometimes & to take a step back & realize that we need to prioritize our family. We’ve written & posted on our blog before about aligning our lives & our actions with our priorities. We attempt to live our lives in accordance with our priorities because that equals success in our minds. But we have also learned that we need to constantly reevaluate our actions & to keep ourselves in check because it is SO EASY to just let life happen to us. We don’t want life to happen to us, though! We want to be intentional with our time! Since we wrote the blog post in 2014 about being more intentional with our time & remembering to live according to our priorities, we’ve welcomed another member to our family, our daughter Tenley who was born in February 2015. We know it’s cliché and every parent says it, but that’s because it’s TRUE! Time flies! Tenley is already over 14 months old & we want to be with her, truly present with her, as often as we can!
That’s why we have decided to take back Sundays as a day of rest & family time. You guys. . . even God Himself took a day of rest. And so we’re allowing ourselves the same. We have told ourselves in the past that we were going to take off Mondays or Tuesdays or something. And then we never did. We’d allow “just one consult” or “just one session” to take up that precious day off on our calendar each week. And then we’d look back at our Summer and Fall and realize it was gone and we hadn’t taken time for our marriage or for our family. We had been so busy capturing others’ lives & memories that we hadn’t made time for our own. Thus, we are going to stop glorifying BUSY & start making Sundays be our family day!
We know our clients will understand. Engagement sessions, senior photo sessions, and family photo sessions will be scheduled during weekday evenings (unless they’ve already been scheduled for a Sunday and are grandfathered in on our calendar). The one exception that we’ll make is for our wedding clients who are from out of town & come to the area on a weekend for their engagement photo session. . . in those special circumstances we will make ourselves available on a Sunday evening.
It’s sometimes scary to make a statement like this when you own your own business. You think crazy thoughts like your business is going to crumble to the ground & you won’t have money to pay your bills if you stop shooting on Sundays. But then you get a grip & remember that is SILLY. God is in control. He’ll take care of us.
This has been on our hearts for quite awhile now, but I recently opened my daily devotional to a passage that SCREAMED at me to write this blog. And I’ll close with a quote from it: “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his. [Hebrews 4:9-10]. People have become a blur. We spend our lives racing from place to place, barely able to breathe. We have great intent but little purpose. Sometimes the only thing to slow us down is a severe health issue or death. Why do we wait for disaster to slow us down? Probably because the wild winds of the world beckon us to whirl forward in our careers, our agendas- to make the most of every hour, every minute. Even on Sunday. But that’s not the way of God. He has another vantage point- the one from heaven. We humans are not machines; we are flesh- and spirit. We cannot go and go without collapsing. We need respite, refreshment, repose, and reflection. If the God of the universe felt it was important to rest after His labors in creating our earth, how much more vital is it for us frail beings to give up our labor one day each week? One of the 10 commandments tells us that Sunday is more important than a day of rest; it is also a holy day. So let us worship our Lord on Sunday. Let us put up our feet. Let us be refreshed for a new week of loving and being loved. That is the way to live- that is the way of heaven.”
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2 responses to “Josh & Danielle Files | Taking Back Sunday | Personal Post”
This was so beautiful and so moving! I appreciate so much your effort to make your family a priority. This is something we strive for constantly in my family and it is tough. Kudos to you for taking this stance. Best of luck and so much health and happiness to you and your beautiful family!
Thank you so much! It is always great to know that we encouraged someone with our words! And thank you for the well wishes!