simple joys

You won't believe what happened.

I won a contest!
I really did win it.

And I won a special prize along with my contest victory.

It's an iTunes gift card for $25. It's not a very extensive prize.

There weren't that many people who entered this contest. I was one of them. So it was not extremely difficult to win, but I'm still glad that I did.

Because winning is a wonderful chance to be recognized by people and to show them that you do matter, that your talents are great.

In fact, it was a photo contest and I submitted the photo I was talking about the other day. Here it is:

This was at the beach the day we went with the families on home visits. And I snapped this candid of her running and having fun. And it won. There was another person's photo that was taken with a very fancy camera with a special lens, and it was staged and taken many times over again.

But mine was a quick snap, and there was only one of them.

And it was raw emotion, not staged and posed. This was an actual glimpse at the childlike wonder of this family. And it was beautiful.

The thing is, it's not the camera that makes the photo; it's the photographer. And the best shots come from spontaneity. It's much like life in that way. A lot of times perfect things - well, things we want to be perfect - don't end up as we have planned or aren't as great as we hoped. But sometimes the random things, like singing the Beatles in our summer house at night, or jumping off the cliff in Costa Rica, are the most beautiful of all.