Up Close and Personal

I received a fabulous gift of a macro lens. It has changed my perspective and my photographs already. 

A friend told me my photographs make him feel closer to God. I replied that God is, after all, the big macro lens. God is in the details. We're not much without his ability to magnify and cannot forget that our role is to glorify, whether or not we have the perfect job or a full line-up of clients.

I tried out the new lens on a fly on the jack-o-lantern on Halloween. Poor Jack was a bit on the rotten side, sagging with his insides a slimy pool. The fly had already planned where his next several meals were coming from and kindly didn't budge from Jack’s eye while I tried to get my settings right.  It isn't one of my best photographs.  But life is like that.  Sometimes you macro a mediocre picture.

Looking at the details is something I have been doing in other parts of my life, too.  You can’t take a macro lens to yourself and photograph without a certain amount of subjectivity.  In our world, it is too easy to select the “trash” icon to eliminate what we don't want to see.  Exposing the details that might not always be so comfortable is what introspection and job hunting are all about. 

The gift of the lens as a good sign that I am about to start a new step in this process.  For months, I have looked closely at what I like to do and what I don't, what I am good at and what I'm not so good at.  Each macro step I take gives me a better picture of what the whole me really is and where I need to be.  This is all about dissecting down to the tiny details to see what you're made of.

Sometimes I take a step back because I don't love everything I see and if I am not careful I lose confidence, focus on the amplified negativity of the situation of my unemployment and its growing ranks.  It's like peeling an onion, only to find that it still smells like an onion, makes you cry more the further you cut into it, and sometimes there are ugly pieces inside that need to be discarded. And so it goes.

The resume, but one tool in the job-hunting kit, is designed to give the big picture of you so that potential employers can drill down and magnify the parts they are interested in.  It should be the book jacket of the best seller that is the employed me.  I can’t wait to take that photograph!

If I could take the macro lens to my eating habits, I wonder if I would find the reason why eating and cooking give me comfort.  Why is eating salad is not as comforting as eating garlic cheese grits with shrimp and collard greens?

There are endless analogies for this period of my life and I am choosing to focus on the positive ones, amplifying the things that are helpful and growth-inducing such as realizing that I really do want to run a nonprofit organization one day and that I love being in a consulting role when I can help nonprofits gain insight and move forward.  

When I get tired of focusing on the job hunt, I can take my camera and my new macro lens to the garden or down the street to the park and capture the tiny parts of leaves, plants, crawling things and other amazing works of our God who is so into the details.  Even turnips look good with the macro lens!