Effect

They call it the “Kelly effect,” my friends who want to take photos like mine. They watch me work to see what I’m doing and squeal over meeting me because they have seen my work. They don’t know the other people I see who take photos I want to take, or how I rarely capture what my heart sees anyway. They don’t know how I cringe inside, wishing I should share the how with them, wishing there was a way to share the why.

Some see my writing and tell me I should write a book, but while I pull the idea out and turn it over once in a while, I know that I probably won’t, that if I do, I will very likely use a pseudonym, because my writing would be deeper than my photography, because what I say about what I see is beauty so much harder to hear than my photos are to the eye.

The “Kelly effect” is what has sent friends running, the “I said too much” and the “I am not enough.” I do not live a life people want to emulate – there is not a lot of glamour in the mess of me. I pray through conversations and walk away knowing that I said what I was supposed to say, and walk away wondering if people will ever speak to me again, if God will speak quickly through the words He gave me to speak or if it will be years and years before I see the fruit of what I’ve shared.

I think you can see it here at this blog, where my struggles and journey get dumped for whoever might see and identify with the person I am and the battles I fight.

When I get behind my lens, I am exploring a feeling, a response to something I see, attempting to capture the reality of a given moment. When I speak, I put words to what I’ve seen, creating a verbal photograph with all its exquisite dumbness through the lens of language. When I shoot, I open my lens and let all the light in – when I speak, it is much the same. But light hung out in words and sound and finite language suspended between hearts – it is often too much for a soul to grasp, and certainly too much for me to teach or explain or to keep explaining.

Someone said last weekend that seeing all the time is too much. Yet this is my gift – and I do still call it a gift.

I see all the time. I cannot help seeing. Taking that gift and pouring it into photography and sharing it with the world is one thing. Using that gift to encourage the Body – that is another. Because it is a prophet’s gift, and that is not acceptable in any circle, because it hurts, because others don’t want to be seen, because people don’t want to hear what the Spirit is saying and how He will redefine the boxes in which they’ve placed Him.

And really? I think too many have used this gift without love, without a breaking heart, without realizing the trust they are given when they are asked to speak into another’s life. Few are willing to walk away from their words and trust God with them, instead of demanding immediate change or resolution. I think few realize that we in His Body are all His first; we are not merely the sum of our habits and sins.

I know I have failed here myself.

So I learn this new every day, and I’m learning how to live outside of this too, learning discretion and bearing with others in love, learning how to hurt and trust God with my pain. It is the hardest lesson, and one I suspect I will be learning all my life.