The Box of Chocolates

Life is like...

How I eat a box of chocolates: I inspect the chart of flavors and take small nibbles out of each chocolate that doesn't include raspberry or coconut (ick!). I then take note of which chocolates I like best (usually Irish cream or milk chocolate) and save those for last - if I can wait that long!

Last Thursday, my boss gave me a box of chocolates. Some of you might be wondering, "boss"? Yes, my boss. As in, my supervisor at the global biotechnology company at which I worked. Others of you may be thinking, "worked"? As in, I knew you had a day job and I thought you still did? What's with the past tense? Well, these chocolates were a farewell gift.

Last Friday was my last day in the corporate world, and today I am sitting at home in front of my computer in the middle of the day, working on what I want to work on for the rest of my life, wedding photography!

This post is going to be brutally honest, and I'm hoping that it doesn't come back to haunt me, so here it goes!! In the last 14 months I graduated college, began shooting weddings with my husband Jeff who had been going strong for two years, got my first real job in the corporate world as a recruiting coordinator, got laid off in a budget cut from that job, found another recruiting job, was getting more and more involved in the photography business, was offered a new job in my first company, and now have become a full-time wedding photographer. When I told my most recent boss that I was leaving, she asked how I felt. I said that I felt change weary to say the least! Every time I get settled down, God throws something new into the mix! But this has been the best change of them all. Nothing has felt better and more right than this. This business is what I love and it is what I wholeheartedly want to do. And, God-willing, this change is going to last!

Like most wedding photographers, I never thought I'd be doing this. Two years ago, wedding photography didn't even exist to me. I was going to be a writer, a teacher, a professor, a traveler. I was studying to be a high school teacher when suddenly God took all ambition and all desire for that profession away from me during my last year of school. Bitterly disappointed that I had wasted so much time on studies I wasn't going to use, I took a job in HR. But God was merely waiting for me to pick up the next piece of chocolate...

So when I received this box of chocolates from Moonstruck Chocolatier as a goodbye gift, a tear came to my eye. I read the flavor descriptions and slowly began nibbling away at the different shapes, pondering over the flavors, letting them sit while I thought about each one. Just a nibble, yet so much to take in. And to my surprise I liked the Mayan Truffle the best, a blend of milk chocolate and cinnamon (on the bottom left corner - yum!), a blend of what I've always loved with something new on top. It was the one I decided to save for last, for a special moment when I would enjoy it most.

And now as I write this post and eat my piece of cinnamon chocolate, I know that there are going to be many more pieces of chocolate in my box called Life, but this is the sweetest one I have ever experienced.