How Delight came to be . . {Be Loved with Kristin}

I wasn’t asking for this.  If you want me to be truthful, if there was a demographic that I didn’t want to be apart of I would have said “teen girls”.  BUT. . .everything changed in October of 2011 when I was attending a retreat called “For the Love” in a little tiny town (if you want to call it a town) in southern Oregon.  One morning while doing devotions, I was praying and reading my bible, but I kept getting interrupted by a vivid picture in my mind. I continued reading my bible and tried to put it out of my head. But, I couldn’t concentrate on anything else as the picture was so intense.  The picture was a of room full of teen girls with cameras around their necks and their eyes closed, hands raised worshipping God.  I was like “Really? You’ve got to be kidding me?  Where did that come from?”.  It’s not as if I have this happen on a daily basis, but it was so real that I couldn’t ignore it. My heart started pounding and I felt like I needed to write it down in my journal.  Not only did I write that, but as I started to write down the visual picture on paper, I wrote down the date (third weekend in April), location (Leavenworth, WA) for teen girls (ages 15-20)  who are seeking Jesus and photography. As I got up at the end of the session and headed into lunch, I felt like I was supposed to tell Ginny Corbett (founder of For the Love). So, as we were sitting around the lunch table and I was telling her, I was thinking “great, this really sounds crazy. . .she must think I’m crazy” and “now I’m going to have to follow through” and “I don’t have time for this”.  :) But, Ginny is seriously one of my favorite people I have ever spent time with. . .she didn’t laugh at me and my crazy “vision”, but  just lovingly encouraged me.

I could seriously write a book and share the amazingness of how God provided our amazing worship leaders, The Wicks & Izzi Ray and our speakers, Jody Gray and Crystal Lewis. How HE provided a beautiful peaceful home (the exact home that was in my picture that God gave me), how HE brought 15 amazing girls from 8 different states & Canada, how HE set up amazing stylized sessions, how HE provided amazing mentors for the girls, how HE used vendors (such as Kelly Moore, Showit, JillE,.  . .over $3500 worth of items) to bless the girls, how HE bonded the girls together where there was no judgement and complete acceptance of each other, how HE blessed us with some amazing food (thanks, mom and Dana!!) and more than anything how HE changed my heart so that I would have a passion for teen girls. . .to me that is the greatest miracle!

Since the retreat, my heart has become even more passionate and my eyes more opened to the issues that these you are faced with. This past summer I felt God asking me to begin a blog.  I fought it as I am NOT a writer.  I am also very technologically impaired.  So, I kept asking “is this really from you, God?”. . .”is this really something you want me to do?”.  Well, God has blessed me with amazing girls to support me. . .Kristina, Haley, Alora and Jessica.  He also provided me with a network of women who have offered to share their hearts with you as well.  And he provided me with Kimberly Drury of MadiLu Designs & Meg Long of Meg Long Creative to help design the logos, blog and website. I could not do it without their help.

I feel humbled and honored that God would ask me to be apart of your lives.  I know that He has amazing things in store for Delight and for each of your lives.  Please bear with me as I am sure you will see a lot of smiley faces and exclamation points in the future and my grammar may not be correct, but know that I love you guys and my prayer is that the words that I share and others share will be REAL, RAW and RELEVANT.  I love you guys and can’t wait to see what God has in store for the future of Delight!