The Road Ahead

The past few months have been quite the adven­ture. We launched the offer of a life­time — free pho­tog­ra­phy! — and every­body jumped on it. Decem­ber was com­pletely booked. I’m not even sure how we found time to eat or bathe it was so busy. But as crazy as it was, it was so reward­ing and a whole lotta fun. We really do think that we have the funnest clients/friends ever!

Now it is Jan­u­ary 2009 and we have offi­cially launched our pho­tog­ra­phy busi­ness — Prokopets Stu­dio. That feels so good to say. And as things have calmed down, I’ve been doing a lot of reflect­ing about life which this busi­ness is a huge part of my life. One of the things that Vitaliy and I have always had in com­mon is the fact that we are dream­ers. We don’t just dream, we dream big! Some­times we’ll lay in bed late at night just before falling asleep and Vitaliy will be shar­ing all of his ideas and aspi­ra­tions for our fam­ily and future until all he hears out of me is “Uhum.” (Silence) Or you can find us sip­ping tea at a local book­store while I’m shar­ing with Vitaliy my 5 point plan to accom­plish­ing all of our goals for the year. You’ve gotta have a list, right? And of course I’m talk­ing loud enough for the entire cof­fee shop area to hear me because my voice tends to raise when I get excited about some­thing. And dreams are excit­ing. They keep me going. They fuel my energy and ignite my drive.

There are days though when dreams can be very intim­i­dat­ing. Over­whelm­ing. A lit­tle par­a­lyz­ing. What keeps us going on days like these? There are two things that keep us going. God and You. Our faith in Jesus Christ is the foun­da­tion of our life. It reminds us of the big­ger plan, gives us an eter­nal per­spec­tive on our lives. If I start to feel over­whelmed about this or that, I can stop and be reminded that in the big­ger scheme of my life, this prob­lem I’m expe­ri­enc­ing is but a spec in the whole pic­ture. One of my pas­tors recently gave me an illus­tra­tion that lit­er­ally has been pen­e­trat­ing my thought life on a daily basis since the con­ver­sa­tion. He said the rea­son so many peo­ple are stressed out or depressed is because they view God as the size of their fist and they view their cir­cum­stances as infi­nite. Obvi­ously, this should be com­pletely reversed. Our cir­cum­stances are but the size of a fist and we have such a big and pow­er­ful God. That really puts things in per­spec­tive for me and gives me the encour­age­ment and sup­port I need to face my fears and fight for my dreams.

Then there is you. Each one of you that con­sis­tently vis­its our blog and views our work is an encour­age­ment to us. Every time you post a com­ment or send an encour­ag­ing email you are mak­ing an invest­ment in us. You are each a part of mak­ing our dreams pos­si­ble. I am hum­bled by the amount of encour­ag­ing emails we’ve received from peo­ple telling us they are proud of us or that they are pray­ing for us or that they are finally excited to find a pho­tog­ra­pher whose style they love. What!! I have to ask myself, “Did they really just say that?” But you did. And it is what keeps us going. It fuels us and makes us feel that the dream is tan­gi­ble. I want to thank you for your kind words. Thank you for spread­ing the word about us, rec­om­mend­ing us to a friend or fam­ily mem­ber, or for shar­ing our pic­tures with the world. Each one of you have made an invest­ment in us and we are grateful.

The future is unclear, but each step we take brings things into focus. I am excited to see where our cam­era brings us. I am eager to walk the road ahead.