Norris Dam || Knoxville, TN Photographer || Hargis Family

Norris Dam State Park

This is the second time I’ve been to Norris Dam State Park this year and gosh…it’s just so pretty. It’s a 30 minute drive for me coming from Fountain City, but every time I get there, it’s just so worth it! It’s funny, when we first moved to Knoxville from Nashville, a 30 minute drive was so standard. It would literally take us 30 minutes to get anywhere outside of the Kroger at the bottom of the hill. It was so normal, and we would drive a good 45 minutes to go to church every Sunday like it was nothing. So, when we first moved back, we were arriving 15 minutes early everywhere we went. But now, our bodies have adjusted lol. Now we are like 30 minutes?!?! Geez, it’s forever away. We have literally postponed getting a Costco membership because it’s 30 minutes away ha! What is wrong with us?? So, why am I telling you this? Because I’ve been going through something the past couples weeks, and I’ve had this epiphany. You may or may not have seen this on my Insta story, but I had a mole removed on my back a couple weeks ago. They sent it off for testing, and it came back as Melanoma. They immediately scheduled a surgery for me to have a large chunk of skin removed from my back in efforts to remove the skin cancer. The nurse that called me to tell me the diagnosis scared the poop out of me. I have zero experience with cancer and know very very little about it, and I asked her should I be freaking out right now, like how serious is this? Her response to me was, “Well, honey, it’s not a death sentence like it used to be.” Woah. The tears came roaring into my eyeballs. That sentence echoed in my head over and over and over. I immediately started praying while also trying to listen to her say more things that were terrifying. In that moment, the Lord used this woman to awaken my heart. I have been slammed this summer with work. and being a mom. and a wife. and balancing my very, very little time. I had put my relationship with God on the back burner. Don’t get me wrong, it was still there. I still talked to Him every day, but I wasn’t and hadn’t been pouring his Word into my heart like I should. In much the same way as Dustin and I have grown so accustomed to the lighter traffic and smaller geographical distances in Knoxville, I had grown accustomed to our very blessed, easy life. Almost every time I prayed, I would thank God for everything He had blessed us with and ask Him to help us not take it for granted and to steward our resources the way He would want us to. When it came right down to it, I wasn’t being quiet enough to hear Him. In just 24 hours, my relationship grew with Christ because of this news, and I am so thankful for that. We are still waiting to hear back about the pathology results, but whatever they say, I will ultimately be thankful for this moment, as it has brought me closer to Jesus and hopefully this message can do the same for you.

This is so not what I was planning on writing. I had this whole thing in my head about how much I love the Hargis family and was going to talk about how AMAZING their little munchkins are. Then, as my fingers typed I realized God was steering this blog a different direction. To Whitney and Kevin, you are awesome, and I am so so thankful for our relationship and you guys letting me photograph your sweet kiddos. I hope that you love your images and aren’t too disappointed that the blog post didn’t rave as much as it normally does. But the Lord was working, and I know you will be thankful for that!

I’m a Knoxville Wedding Photographer that loves to travel… I shoot anywhere! If you have any questions about pricing or booking with me, click here to contact me now! If you liked what you saw above, go ahead and follow me on Facebook or Instagram to see my daily updates of the latest sessions!

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