In the days when my heart is despondent, when I dig after the roots of its’ troubles, I find that I’m ultimately grieving brokenness and lack of intimacy and connection. 

I believe we were made for connection: with God, with our fellow man, with the earth. So brokenness grieves me. 

My human story on earth is one of brokenness: of a broken family, of a broken marriage, of broken friendships and the grief and loneliness that has come from those broken relationships. Maybe one reason I’m so drawn to celebrating marriage at a wedding as a photographer is because I believe it is a unifying of relationship and a bringing together of two people, of two families. 

It is the hopeful believer in me that strives for and reaches for connection on this earth. I chase connection because there’s been so much brokenness in my life and I want to be a part of something good and whole. I think it’s a way my spirit is calling for things to be made right, to reset to what God intended. I want restoration of connection, of intimacy. 

It’s in these lingering days of isolation in the pandemic that my aloneness is amplified. It’s in these days I feel the disconnection weighing heavily on my spirit. Already struggling with singleness caused by divorce, the pandemic disconnected me from relationships I was forming, disconnected me from my work, disconnected me from my new community, and disconnected me from the world in these shelter at home orders. I am feeling the weight of isolation on my spirit. 

But yet, I will hope. I will hope that intimacy and connection can be restored. In the meantime, I feel and grieve separation.