morning light

When John and I started the process of looking to buy our first house in 2012, we found a house that we thought we would be happy to live in. I asked my Mum to have a look around the house with us, to see if there was anything important that we might not have noticed. One of the first questions she asked was which direction the house was facing. We established that the main living room of the house would never be full of light. We tried to buy the house, but it was an unusual sale process, due to having been repossessed. I can't quite believe we considered living in a house that would never benefit from direct sunlight. For so many reasons, I am glad that we didn't end up living there. I am pleased to say that the house we ended up buying glows when the sun shines. I just love coming downstairs on a sunny morning and seeing the walls turn golden.

One of the first lessons I learned when I started using an SLR camera was how important lighting is, and there is absolutely no light that compares to natural light. We often play with our shadows in the morning light, in that small window of time when the sun fills our dining room while we eat breakfast. I took these photos on the morning that followed a particularly rough night with Ruby that involved very little sleep and plenty of tears (mine included). There is something about the darkness of night that can feel heavy, particularly when sleep evades me. In the middle of the night, it can feel like morning might never come, so when it arrives in such a glorious manner, I am even more thankful for the beauty of light. It is a simple but constant reminder that God's mercies are new every morning. When I think about how much happiness sunshine brings, and how much the light alone lifts my spirits, it makes so much sense to me that the Bible says, 'God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.'