Seven years ago, I (Jordan) dropped out of law school.
We were just 22. Newlyweds.
It was the middle of the recession, and I’d just lost $10,000 on credits I’d never complete. Toward a degree I’d never earn. For a career I thought was everything.
I burned almost our entire savings. My heart was as bitter as the taste in my mouth. I was broken. So sorry. But mostly scared.
To get back on my feet, I started volunteering at Amy’s elementary school. A few days later, her principal hired me. That first year, I did anything and everything. I organized morning drop-off and afternoon pick-up. I covered recess. I subbed when teachers were sick. I wheeled a laptop cart around campus and taught computers.
In a twist of fate, Amy met her mentor photographer there.
He was a dad at the school, and she asked if she could assist him. She’d been following wedding photographers’ blogs since we got married — and even though she never really thought “their” life was possible for us, she dreamed anyways. She offered to work for free anyways. She carried his bags, got him water and learned as much as she could anyways. The fire was lit.
I started coaching soccer at our church so we could save for our first camera.
In the beginning, we took pictures nobody saw and wrote blogs that nobody read.
“The market is too saturated,” they said. “Nobody reads blogs anymore,” they said.
We dreamed anyways. Some days, we felt progress. Other nights, we cried ourselves to sleep. But we kept getting up in the morning. Kept shooting. Kept writing to the invisible audience we hoped one day would come.
If you would’ve told me 7 years ago things like an NFL football player would fly us to Paris to photograph his proposal because his sweet girlfriend follows our blog, I wouldn’t have believed it.
But just because my future wasn’t visible to me doesn’t mean it wasn’t clear to God.
So, if you are today where we were 7 years ago: shoot like everyone is watching, write like everyone is reading, love the clients you have like the clients you want, and serve that invisible audience with everything you have.
Because God sees you, what you don’t see, and in His perfect timing, He’ll make what you can’t see visible.