My Story |
His Glory

I've been writing for as long as I can remember.

When I was little, I wrote things in the corners of my Bible or in the journals my mom bought me as a preteen. I wrote down things I wondered about, things I was trying to understand, and sometimes things I didn't want anyone else to understand. I would almost code the words so they could belong to me without anyone else knowing what they meant.

My mom used to buy me these tiny journal books. She would write Scriptures in them for me to meditate on because she wanted to teach me how to write God's Word on my heart. Eventually, I began writing in those same journals myself.

I found one of those little journals again years later, and what I love about this particular page is that it has both of our handwriting on it. The first two passages are my mom's, and the red writing is mine.

By junior high, I was writing poetry. In high school, I discovered photography, and I loved it for many of the same reasons I loved writing.

The story was always something I found when I looked through the lens.

I could see things through a camera that almost seemed hidden from the world around me. Over time, I realized that when I went out to photograph something, I often found a little piece of myself along the way.

I didn't understand then how important that would become.

After years of childhood and marital trauma, I reached a point where I was tired of fighting to hang on to who I was. I could feel myself fading away, and there were times when the only way I could still see myself was through photographs I had taken or pages of things I had written.

They reminded me that I had been there. That Shanna was still there.

Finding My Way

I was 37 years old when I found myself lost, and I mean that in more ways than one.

I was in a season of life when I was struggling to recognize myself, and I realized there were things I had never really learned to do on my own. One of those things was finding my way around. I had spent so many years riding along while someone else drove that I rarely paid attention to where we were going.

So I started driving, intentionally going places without knowing exactly where I was headed because I wanted to learn how to find my own way.

One evening, as the sun was going down, I found myself lost. I stopped and took this photograph, and even though I didn't know exactly where I was, I could still see God in what was happening around me.

After that day, whenever I went out with my camera, I would tell everyone, “I'll be back in a little while. I'm going to get lost.”

I loved discovering what I could find when I wasn't so focused on where I was going. I would notice things along the road that I probably would have passed right by if I had been worried about reaching a particular destination.

And the funny thing is, I've never felt alone when I've had my camera with me. It's like the viewfinder is a little peephole into heaven.

I could be completely lost on a road I'd never traveled before and still find myself looking through that little opening, seeing something beautiful and recognizing God's presence right there in the middle of it.

I was learning how to find my way on the road, but through the lens, I was also finding pieces of myself and discovering more of Him along the way.

Eventually, I found an app that allowed me to put words I had written into music and hear them sung back to me. Hearing my own songs did something I wasn't expecting. I heard pieces of myself in those words that I hadn't heard in a very long time.

So I started looking again.

I opened old boxes and found journals, poems, photographs, memories and words I had carried with me for years. As I uncovered them, I began uncovering myself too.

I found Shanna again.

The Runaway Girl

When I started going through some of my old writings, I found a little book I had written and illustrated as a child called The Runaway Girl. I honestly don't remember why I wrote it, but when I read it again all those years later, I began recognizing things about myself that I hadn't understood before.

The story was about a little girl whose mother had been treating her badly and whose father no longer lived at home. She wanted to find her dad, and at some point, she came across a circus filled with people. But instead of talking to any of those people, she chose to talk to the animals.

She shared the things that were troubling her with a lion, an elephant, a dog, and a bear. They all gave her advice, but the bear gave her the best advice. By the end of the story, her mother recognized that she had been wrong and asked her daughter for forgiveness.

I had a wonderful family and a home I loved, but there were also painful things happening in my childhood that I didn't know how to talk about. When I found that book again, something about those animals immediately connected with me.

Ask anyone in my family, and they'll tell you I had more stuffed animals in my room than could fit. There was something comforting about having them around, and I found comfort in knowing I wasn't alone, even if the company was stuffed.

When I read The Runaway Girl again, I recognized that same comfort in the little girl who chose to confide in animals rather than the crowd of people around her.

I can't tell you exactly what every part of that childhood story meant when I wrote it. But I can tell you what I recognized when I found it again. There were pieces of myself in those pages that I hadn't noticed before, and it made me wonder how many other things I had written over the years that might tell me something about myself if I went back and read them again.

So I did. I started reading the chapters I may have skipped.

To Know Who I Am

I found another piece of writing from the late 1990s called To Know Who I Am. I remember knowing that something inside me hurt, but I didn't fully understand why. I kept searching for answers in the pain I'd experienced earlier in life, without realizing how much of myself I was losing in the season I was living through.

When I read those words again years later, I could see something I hadn't recognized when I first wrote them. I wasn't necessarily trying to discover who I was. I think I was trying to hang on to the person I was afraid of losing.

And I remember feeling relieved when I read those words again, because this time I was in a different place in my life. I knew who I was in Christ. I had learned that no situation or person could take away my dignity, and the fear that had once followed me was gone because I was walking in the truth that my worth was found in Him.

As I healed, I started seeing something I couldn't have seen when I was writing those words the first time. They were connected.

I could read something I had written about pain as a little girl and then find that same pain years later on the pages of a completely different journal, written during a completely different season of my life. I could look through photographs taken years apart and recognize the same search for something I didn't yet know how to name.

What once looked like scattered pieces of my life began to look like a story.

I realized that the little girl writing in the corners of her Bible, the teenager writing poetry, the girl looking through a camera lens, the woman filling journals and the woman hearing her words become songs had been telling pieces of the same story all along.

I just couldn't see how they connected yet.

Then I understood why the story mattered.

When My Story Became Hope for Someone Else

I had always known God was with me. What I didn't understand was why I had gone through some of the things I did.

The first time I shared my testimony was in Nicaragua. Honestly, it felt like a pretty safe place to do it because I had a translator and the people listening didn't speak English. There was something comforting about putting a whole language between me and the most vulnerable parts of my story.

But after I finished, a woman came to speak to me.

Through the translator, she briefly shared some of her own story. Then she told me that hearing mine had given her hope.

I felt God's nudge in that moment.

He wasn't going to let my pain go without purpose.

Several years later, I was asked to share my testimony again. This time I wasn't safely tucked behind a translator in another country. I was sharing it here in the States.

I knew that nudge again, so I shared.

Afterward, a young girl came to me. She shared part of her story and told me that mine had given her hope.

There it was again.

My pain hadn't disappeared. What happened hadn't suddenly become okay because someone else benefited from hearing about it. But God was showing me that the painful parts of my story did not have to end with me.

There were other women and girls carrying pain too. They had pages of their own, even if they hadn't written on them yet. They had stories they didn't understand and pieces that didn't seem to connect.

I knew that feeling.

Those things hadn't just helped me find my story. God could use my story to help someone else begin finding hers.

That's where My Story | His Glory really began.

Not because I believe every painful thing happens for a reason. Not because I can explain everything I've lived through. There are still things I don't understand.

But I know God was with me in all of it, and I have watched Him take things that hurt and use them to bring hope to someone else.

That's His glory.

The Pictures Are Part of the Story, Too.

The photographs that tell my story throughout this site are mine. Some were taken recently, while others have been with me for nearly 40 years.

That's intentional.

I've always believed there is a story hiding inside an image, and as I started putting the pieces of my life together, I realized the photographs were part of the pages too. They captured places I had been, things I noticed and moments when I was looking through a lens without knowing that years later I would come back and see something completely different.

Some aren't perfect. Some were taken long before digital cameras, websites or social media existed. They weren't created for content. They were simply part of the path that brought me here.

And I don't know a better way to invite you into my story than to let you see some of the path along the way.

Why I Share It.

I want to share the things I wonder about, the photographs that make me stop, the pages I've written, the songs that have come from them and the things God continues to teach me along the way.

But even more than that, I want to help other people find their pages and find their lens.

Because somewhere inside the things you've written, photographed, survived, questioned, prayed about, tucked into boxes or haven't found words for yet, there may be pieces of a story you haven't been able to see.

I know what it feels like to think you've lost yourself. I also know what it feels like to start finding the pieces again.

And I believe there will come a day when someone else needs to hear your story too.

This is my story. His glory is why I share it.