Monthly Archives: June 2012

The Power of Love – Family Edition

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This will be the only reference to Huey Lewis in this post. 😉

I always find something positive to come away with when I shoot a wedding. Saturday, Joseph and I had the opportunity to shoot for a military family. Since one of my best friends is current deployed, I have a renewed sense of deep appreciation for those who serve in our armed forces. They have to make a lot of sacrifices.

When it came to the dancing portion of the night, the bride and groom shared their first dance as per the tradition. Next up was the father/daughter dance. However, the DJ handed a microphone to the bride who in turn explained what was about to happen. One of her sisters got married to a Marine about 4 years ago, and because of the craziness of fitting in a wedding with about 2 weeks of planning due to an impending deployment, the sister never got to have her father/daughter dance, and she had talked about how she had wished she could have had that. So, the bride dedicated that first dance to her sister.

Father/Daughter Dance

 

It was a beautiful moment. I’m thankful to see there are other families out there who are close to each other like mine. I am spoiled and blessed by my family.

Thanks for reading,
Jon Cole

Unity

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Coach Bechtel sent the girls on their water break yesterday during practice. They sat in the shade to recoup and chat with each other. Then, something really cool happened.

I hadn’t noticed that the freshmen had sat down in their own little group away from the rest of the team at first. Then, one of the veterans hollered toward the freshmen, “hey…come over with us. We don’t bite! You’re a part of this team!”

This is one of the many reasons I love this team. They are one. They are family. They have each others’ backs. And they don’t leave anyone behind.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen some churches who could take a lesson from my girls. We’re all in this together.

Team Huddle 2011

2011

Thanks for reading,
Jon Cole

The Women in My Life

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A couple weeks ago, we had a ladies banquet at church to honor the women in our lives. Our pastor, Joel, asked us, as the men of the church, to say something about the woman in our lives. Since I don’t have “that special lady” as of yet, I chose to talk about some other special women in my life…my mom, my sister, and my grandma.

I had in my head that afternoon leading up the event that it would be easy for me to speak at length about what these women mean to me. There’s a couple of problems with that line of thinking. First, if I don’t have something prepared, I panic in front of crowds. I cannot just speak off the top of my head. Just ask the girls that were in Impact Worship Center’s youth group a couple years ago when i was asked to speak. I nearly knocked the stool over that I was to sit on just trying to form words. Second, I get emotional. That is definitely something I got from my dad. It doesn’t take much for me to form tears. Just ask anyone who’s heard me talk at length about my nieces and nephews or my soccer girls.

When it was my turn in front of everybody, I choked out about 3 sentences…hardly the justice and appreciation they deserve.

Mom and I playing Rock Band

Mom and I playing Rock Band

So, without further ado… Continue reading →

Jason and Heidi

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A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to spend some time with some dear friends and celebrate their wedding day with them. I shot the wedding for them semi-professionally I guess you could say. 🙂 I got to work a little and play a little. It was a wonderful day with beautiful weather for the cookout afterwards. Here are some of my favorite shots from the day:

Alena being sillyGetting ready Continue reading →

86,400

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Friday was the first official day that coaches could hold practices with the girls. I was looking forward to it, so I worked out my schedule so I could be there, too. It was fun, throughout the day, to see the girls posting via Facebook and Twitter how excited they were to get back to the game they love.

During water breaks, the coaches would talk to the girls about what is expected and mindsets they should have going into this season. Coach Laux came forward with a sheet of paper that had “86,400” on it. He asked the girls what they thought it meant. One of the freshman almost immediately called out the answer.

86,400 is the number of seconds in one day. Coach wanted to be sure that the girls realized that every second is a chance to do something…a chance to work toward a goal. He reminded the girls that you can’t save those seconds. Once they are gone, they are gone.

I thought about all this while he was relating his life experience to the girls in order to encourage them to keep moving forward. Yes, he was encouraging them to work hard in soccer and do their best. But he was also, without going into a lot of detail, was encouraging them in their lives. There are people all around us…friends, family, classmates, co-workers, etc…that are impacted by  what we do. We don’t know how many sets of 86,400 we will get.

Case in point: one of my best friends had updated his Facebook tonight with something that told me he had something on his mind. I got on the phone with him to find out that while he was driving home from a day trip he took, he witnessed a horrendous accident. The thing is: he had just changed lanes on the highway when another vehicle slammed into the vehicle that took the spot he had just left. Had he stayed there, he could have been on the receiving end of that accident.

Each day we are given is a gift. We need to make a positive impact. We need to love.

And if you are member of the Lady Colts soccer team, we need to leave it all out on the field. No limits. 🙂

Thanks for reading,
Jon Cole