vision is kind of like birth.

Back in 2010, my brother Tommy filled in for me in Legacy and started a series on Vision so that I could have maternity leave with Elijah. He started the week before I was scheduled to deliver and had a wonderful idea (he always does) to incorporate my pregnancy and birth into his message. It was the perfect illustration.... going through the process of bringing a vision to fruition is very similar to bringing life into the world and is a very Biblical concept. The problem (and with Tommy there is always a "problem") was that he wanted to interview me right before giving birth and immediately after (we didn't even discuss anything in between... he values his own life too much). At the time I did it because I knew it would be a powerful live object lesson for the youth, despite the fact that I don't even allow people to photograph me when I'm pregnant. I just found a few of the unedited videos on the computer in the youth room and was in love with them. Granted, I look horrendous and am slightly out of it for the "after" video, but it was very powerful to see the correlation of what I said back then to what God is doing in my own life currently. It was weird... it was like my 2010 self was encouraging my 2014 self. It's funny how God works. I debated so long about putting this on my blog because I've never been a big fan of puffy "pregnant Lori," but I wanted to have a place where I could refer to it with the kids and maybe it can speak to someone else as well. I am so grateful I went along with one of Tommy's crazy schemes... honestly, I wish I would have done it with all 4 kids.

(The "before" video is having a lot of trouble loading,
so I was only able to put up the "after" at this point.)