Hundreds of failures

This picture was taken from my mother- and father-in-laws' backyard in Hobbs, New Mexico this past summer.

The lightning was beautiful that night. I watched it dance around the field and I was in awe. I stood there with my camera for forever. Had to be a couple of hours. Everyone thought I was crazy, and I had some okay shots already. I could have quit then. I had plenty of shots of the lightning. I was freezing cold standing out there (it was nighttime and windy, and I was in shorts and a tanktop), and my arms were getting tired. I had hundreds--literally hundreds of photos that I had to manually delete that were nothing but blackness, with three little dots. (I used the three "dots", or lights, on the left hand side of the photo as a level point. I couldn't see anything in the blackness, so I had to have something to go by.) I remember the lightning hitting everywhere but where I had my camera pointed. It was frustrating, but I kept going. Snap, snap, snap. Pictures of blackness. Pictures of lightning, and they were beautiful. And then, finally, THE picture. This one. The culmination of my efforts. All the cold, the aching, the looks I was getting, the manual deleting that took forever...it was all worth it. It melted away when I saw this picture, and I was giddy. Completely nuts about it.

And when I look at this picture, I can't help but think that God put that lightning there at just the right moment, for me. He smiled and said "okay, okay, here ya go." Daddy let me win the game, and I've never forgotten the hundreds of failures that it took to get to that moment. How much more I appreciate what is given when I have to sacrifice to get there.