No one can make you feel inferior.

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

-Eleanor Roosevelt

I feel like commonly heard quotes quickly lose their power. Keep this one on your radar while you read this.

I love taking pictures. That right there is me and my first baby back in high school, a hand-me-down DSLR from a friend, taking a very stereotypical photograph on the Pontchartrain bridge. I think I first really fell in love with photography when I went to high school. I went through a slew of good ole' point and shoots, many of them are probably still laying somewhere in a Lazer Tag or on the lakefront, lost because if my head wasn't attached, I'd lose it too.

My junior year in college I decided it was time to invest in a quality camera, did my research, and bought my new baby, a Canon D3000. First big girl purchase. I bought my camera with the intentions of documenting life with it. No aspirations of being a photographer, just a nice camera to take nice pictures of my friends with. And maybe a pretty building here and there.

hi short brown hair!

Being "that friend" that's always instructing everyone to get together PLEASE and you-move over. yes. scoot works well with my some what bossy personality, and as much as people may groan and complain, I like to think they're thankful to have the memories once the pictures are up.

But here's the thing. When you've got someone in your life who constantly makes fun of you pulling out your camera, who refuses to take pictures with you when you want to document moments, and tells you to "ugh hurry up" when you're trying to set up a cute picture on the beach...you can kind of lose your drive to take photographs.

I realized recently that the wedding I was in couple weeks ago was the first time I'd picked up my camera since I graduated in May. Three months of not one picture, save the ones I snap on my iPhone here and there. Unacceptable. I'd let someone take the joy that comes with being behind that lens.

So here's the larger picture {because you knew there had to be one, and yes, pun intended}-you have to let people take your joy. You have to make a decision to let someone in your life have enough power to make you stop doing the things you love to do. It's probably a gradual process. A "please stop singing along with the radio" here, a "haha, are you trying to dance?!" there and next thing you know, you've quit doing it. You've quit even taking your camera with you places because honestly, it's just not worth it anymore. But they don't steal that from you-you give it up. They help the process along, and I'm not saying it doesn't suck, because been there, done that. It sucks. But you're stronger than that. And your worth isn't staked in what people think of you, it's placed in the glory that the Creator of the Universe, the one who placed that passion in you? His love for you reaches to the

heavens {Psalm 36:5} & He created you to love and to use those things you love to point back to Him.

So if you have someone in your life who gets frustrated when you sing badly with the radio, or scoffs when you bust out that awful dance move, or makes fun of the things you're passionate about because it's "not cool"...I don't know, maybe you should take a second look at that. Because even if they don't want to jump head first into it with you {because let's be fair, it'd be unreasonable to expect people to love everything you love}, your passions and quirks should be something that they deeply love about you and want to be a part of cultivating. They should be the things that draw them to you. The things that make them sit back and smile and be thankful they get to do life with you. They should be the things that they never want to change.

{And clearly this goes for far more than just hobbies and passions. Letting someone change who you are intrinsically is a whole different blog post.}