Part 2 of 4: The Evans Women Discuss Doing What You Love

One of the cool things, I mean, this is just like, this makes me so excited. You are making a living right now doing what you love. Doing what you love. She's always been creative and we tried to figure out, you know, what does that mean? So she took the sewing lessons and she took the art lessons and she did the photography. So she's a full-time photographer, her and her husband together, that is their livelihood. And I just want to talk for a second about what it looks like to, A, do what you love for a living. Like, how does somebody— because you have people going, I don't like my job. What are the first steps towards doing something that you love for a living, but even in the fringe hours? My friend Jessica Turner has a great book by that title about making room for the things that you love in moments when your whole life is sucked up by being a mother or going to work. But just, you have made— You've figured out at a young age how to live your life doing what you love. And what do you tell somebody who wants to do the same thing career, or even in the fringe hours of their day?

Wow.

Me? Yeah, what do you think has helped you to do that? I think, well, initially starting off, I think I was just blessed in that Josh was really welcoming and wanted me to do what I loved. So for a long time, he went to work so that I could do photography, and even though that wasn't the main source of income at the time, just so that I could do what I love and explore, like, what I love to do. And so it was just a blessing that he was able to come home as well from his corporate job and for us to do that together. But I would say, you know, owning a business is hard. And so, like, even though it is something that we really love to do it's also we put a lot of hard work into it. So doing something that you love isn't necessarily like always, oh, this is easy.

And like, that's the grand version.

And they kind of stated over something you just said at the beginning, you were doing it even when it wasn't making money.

Yeah.

And I think that's what a lot of people just want to have a business that's doing this. And it's like, no, you have to be doing it even just because it's what fills you up before it's what's putting food and bread on the table.

Right, exactly. Yeah, absolutely. And we were in college and Josh started the business, he was doing 3-hour-long graduation sessions for $25 and editing 200 pictures for people.

This was before y'all even were a thing. Yeah, before we were even—

he was doing what he loved.

He was doing what he loved on his own. And so when we met and got together and I kind of brought in what I knew and liked and posing and all this, and we kind of combined and did it together, it was very much so, uh, I don't know, a union of like 2 people having their passions and it coming together. And it just turned out to be this really cool thing, but also coupled with a lot of hard work and not that much money. And you know, so—

Chip and Joanna! I mean! We should get an HGTV feature! That would be really cool! We could just meet Chip and Joanna! Yeah, or that! There we go!

I'll just have cameos as a mother-in-law. Hi, I'm here! But you know, it's funny, as you're sitting here talking, I'm It's making me think about Mommy, you saying that, you know, as a teenager you went to camp, you committed your life to the Lord, you said then, way before there was ever a Tony Evans, that you wanted to be in ministry. So when you guys met each other, you were operating in what you want, in your passion, you were operating under what you had already decided you were aiming towards, and you brought those two things together, which I think is an interesting point. And you're doing what you love in marriage.

Yeah.

You know, it's a unique situation to be able to do that and center on that same passion. But you were doing you before he got there.

Right.

And continue to do me and him. It takes a lot of, like you said, work, balance, a lot of communication, so you're growing together and not bypassing each other because you're both driven, you're both called, and you both have passion for for it. So all I can say, it takes a lot of, again, a lot of communication. And there were certain seasons in life where I helped your dad start the church, but from the home, because you all were young and you wanted something. In those days, you had to crank the bulletin out with your arm. Not the bulletin, the machine. The machine that you have to roll the bullet for printing.

What? What?

Right.

I think we've heard this before. This generation knows nothing about—

but so you had to do one at a time?

That was done from home. Because you bought the bulletin, if I'm making any sense, ready.

Picture and everything.

So I would choose a bulletin. Because high school bookstores sold everything. I remember that. So you bought the bulletin, picture and all, choose it. So I bought it for the whole year. Depending on seasons and things like that. Yes, and then I would talk to your dad and type the whole bulletin out., and then I forgot the name of the machine. You run it off. Oh my God. And so I was standing there.

So why did you guys feel you needed a bulletin? It was like, you're talking about 15 or 20 people, right?

No, the church was growing by then. Okay. By then we felt like we needed a bulletin, and probably did it on the kitchen table right here in this beautiful home.

Wow.

You know, but it was us working together and working in the season of life I was in. I had kids, so I couldn't go to the office per se. Yeah. But the office came here, but we're still doing ministry together. So, but you're right.

What about you, Chrystal Hurst? Well, on passion, does somebody, if they want to do it, launch out on something that is related to their income for their home, or just, I just love to do this and how do I do it?

I really just think, I love that term, the fringe hours, because I really think those are the moments that you have to capitalize on. You have to find where those are, where you probably probably have them, you're just not seeing them as opportunities. And do what you love in those moments, because I think one of the greatest sort of, I guess, discoveries or revelations I've had here in the 40s is that there were some things I was doing in my 20s and my 30s in those fringe hours that are the foundation for things in my 40s that I did not know were gonna happen. So if there were little classes I was taking, or little books I was reading, or notes I I was making, or journal entries I was inputting, or blog I would write. I can't tell you how many little blog posts, or how many little Jewelry Box articles— we have this section on our website called the Jewelry Box— how many little articles really were either a chapter in a book that I was gonna write, or I was just losing momentum on a chapter, and I would go and see an article I wrote 10 years earlier, and it was the framework for this chapter. And so it was because— same thing with my mom, she was journaling a a lot when we were little, and then that really became the framework for her first book. So it's like I was just writing little bits and pieces here and there, and then all of a sudden you go, oh, that's actually going to be a book. So if you capitalize and use the fringe hours as opportunities to just little snippets of what you love, you have no idea how that actually is going to be the fuel for something later.

And you're already providing for yourself and you don't even I think that's encouraging just to even flip that totally on its head. I think that's encouraging as a parent, because as you're talking, I'm thinking about that with me with raising Charis, that there were so many things. I was just trying stuff. I was just like, I know she's creative. I wasn't trying to make a career. I was just like, she likes to draw, so take a class. She's interested in sewing, so let me find somebody who can teach you to do that. There was a class on photography at the co-op, and I was like, well, I have a camera, So we'll— I mean, I was just— you're making these small deposits in the life of your kids.

You said small.

Small deposits. Just expose them because you never know what can hit you later or what you can use later. So sometimes I think if we don't go all the way from 0 to 60 in a thing, we think it can't be used. But these little deposits later on— well, the beauty is that God knows exactly how to integrate these different things and these different experiences— and we just have to be faithful to make the deposits for ourselves or for our kids.

I love that.

Yeah, I like that you said small deposits. Small deposits. We don't live in a generation— we talked about that earlier today— we don't live in a generation that's used to small deposits. We want answers now. We want everything now. We want full deposits. We want 100% return. And we serve a God that deals in seasons. Yeah, read Ecclesiastes. That's just the way it is. So we have an old-fashioned God that's still in control, and he does things in small deposits. And we need to learn also to compare ourselves with each other. We all have a different path, a different plan by the same old-fashioned God.