so i have this app called “eyewitness” on my ipad. it’s like checking any news app, but the focus is more on the photography. it even has little “pro-tips” which i enjoy and hope to use in my own photography. but anyways, i came across this picture of an egyptian family sitting in a room. a mother looks away from the camera while surrounded by her children. to their right, an empty chair. a chair where their father used to sit.

i was so intrigued by this photograph, so i ended up looking up the story on “the guardian”. the chair and family belong to a man named Ayman Mohamed Mehdi Issa. he was a man who had a bachelors in journalism but worked at a print store next to his university. he disappeared one day on a risky trip to the capital in order to handle some bills they had. although his wife urged him not to go, he went anyways. he ended up being frisked, detained, and taken to giza along with many other people during the revolt going on.

i don’t want to try to retell the entire article, but long story short, (which i hate to even say in this story…) his wife atta tries to find him and never does. she goes to giza and has his named called in the police station, but no avail.

i am heartbroken for two reasons.

i feel for this woman. i could not even imagine where to begin in my heart and mind what it’s like to lose someone as important as your husband/lover/bestfriend. to lose anything like that and to keep holding on although the chances of her husband coming back is so slim… it breaks and warms my heart all at the same time.

second. as i read through this article… i think to myself, what are the people around me reading in the news today? who has the latest sex tape, what multi-million dollar team won, what did so-and-so wear to this and that? when did THIS become so much more important than everything else going on around the world? i know i can’t judge, because i am just as guilty of being self-absorbed, but man… i hate how selfish we as humans can be. i mean, i literally hurt for this woman who has to go to bed each night now, just praying that she can get through until daylight without the one who once held her close. just hoping that when she tells her kids that their dad joined the army, she won’t break face. this stuff hurts. it’s real. so why doesn’t the rest of the world care? when did our wallets and melodramatic “problems” become so much more important than the REAL problems. the ones that need to be fixed. now.

it’s 0325 and this is what’s going through my mind. i don’t know how many people will read this or how many will even care… but i just hope that by the time i wake up this thursday morning, i won’t wake up forgetting about Atta and Ayman. that i won’t just let this story remain a story, but allow it to push me to seek what is beyond myself. to look for something other than my own wants, but simply see what others are going through and how i can be somewhat of an answered prayer for them. i know i can’t really help this egyptian couple or fix what is fixable halfway around the world, but i don’t want to be one of those who people who could have done something good, but didn’t because they were too busy being caught up in themselves.

even the small things matter. if you can get enough small things together, you end up with something huge and who knows how far that’ll go.

pennies.

goodnight tumblr & God bless.

i’ve always had aspirations to have a daughter to take care, someone i can love like crazy and really protect so that she can grow up into a strong woman who’s beauty can only be topped by her faith (or her mother)… to really provide for someone and love them unconditionally outside of the realm of romanticism with hopes that she might return that love to me one day. 

but now i think i really want a son. i’ve honestly never been too hot on raising a boy other than the fact that with a daughter, my last name might not go as far, which really is no big deal to me. 

but i want a boy so that i can give him all the things i would have wanted as a kid. i wanna play ball with him but teach him respect for the game, not to get cocky because he’s good, but appreciate the art. i want to buy him j’s, but not to be one of those guys who gets so sucked into the shoe game, but let it be about me passing something i love onto him. i want to teach him all about music so that not only will he swoon the ladies with his talents, but that maybe one day he’ll learn to invest them into the Lord. 

just ramblings since i haven’t been on tumblr for a while.