Photographs are interesting things, aren’t they? They tell us stories about who we are and where we have been. Some portray the lives of others, born over a century ago, in a different place, but with our eyes, our smile, our upturned noses. Some portray the faces of the innocent shattered by war or abuse or poverty beyond our comprehension. Some photographs show us places we have never been, of beautiful stark landscapes or vast galaxies we will never fully know. Some remind us of our past, our travels, our homes, or our children when they were younger. They are our own stories; captured moments in time, never to be repeated, but remembered. Some cherished. Some we would rather forget. But all us.
For as long as I can remember I’ve been intrigued by photographs. I would pour over old Time or Life magazines, trying to understand what it must have been like to be the people on the pages. I would flip through travel magazines and brochures (yes, we are way before the days of the internet here) and long to see the places therein. I would wonder about the people, the culture, the cuisine. And hang posters on my walls of the places I dreamed I’d visit one day.
I’ve been blessed to visit many states and other countries in the past decades and wherever I go, I’m always looking at things through the camera lens. I’m by no means a professional photographer, but I enjoy taking snapshots of different places and the things that make it unique. The majestic church buildings and monuments, the flowers by the roadside, the dilapidated barns in the middle of the field, the food or the wine, the narrow streets and quaint shops, the bridges, or the apple blossoms on spring trees. I’ve stopped my husband in the middle of the street so I can take a photo of a church when the light hits it just right or the little green truck that delivers flowers on the streets of Florence. It all tells a story of each place and time.
I have literally thousands of photographs on the cloud of the internet (and a backup hard drive just in case Google fails me) that I have captured and never looked at again. But they’re there and stored as well in my memory. Some of places and things and some of our children. And I have hundreds of pictures taken by others of our kids as well. From their itty bitty babydom to current adolescence. Their sweet faces on piles and piles of pictures that I love to sort through when I get sidetracked cleaning the closet or rearranging rooms. Memories of times long gone. Memories of moments in our life that were sweet and easy in retrospect and others that were so difficult we still aren’t sure how we survived in tact, other than grace. Always grace.
About a month before we adopted Zeke, we had some of my favorite family pictures taken. The girls were almost 5 and 7, so adorable in their matching Matilda Jane dresses and yellow shoes (to their chagrin, they let me dress them then). Pictures of the two running carefree, holding hands, sitting by the old railroad station with the summer sun slowly setting and their feet dangling off the platform. When I look at those photos now I ashamedly admit that my first thought is often, “Life was so much easier then…. without Zeke.” There was a time when I have to admit I wanted that life back. There are days when I have to admit I hate Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder and I wish for that life back. A simple photo. A reminder and yet something far more destructive if I’d allow.
The Lord does not want us to look backwards. Sure it’s good and right to remember our past, what he has done to bring us to where we are now, what he has done to redeem us from our sin, what he has done to heal us and bring us joy, what he has done. But it is not good and right to dwell on days long gone where life was less complicated, or not downright difficult all the time, and wish for those times to return. It’s not okay because that’s not where he has us. And it’s not okay because hindsight is sometimes more blind than it is 20/20. When people have nostalgia for 1950s America, they are romanticizing a dream, not remembering what was. There was certainly just as much sin in the world then as now, albeit less known to those in small town America. The same was true for the Israelites who wandered in the desert for 40 years after the exodus. They didn’t remember the horrors of Egypt, they just knew they hated manna and living in tents. Memories can either draw us toward God or move us away.
We had family photos taken again today. A little more than 5 years after that favorite set I described above. I really cannot think of a more dichotomous picture than those two photo shoots. I have confidence our photographer will work some editing magic and we’ll get one for the Christmas card. But that will be the fake version of what really happened today. The real version started with a whole host of sinful behavior on my part, of which I’ve since repented, responding to a whole host of sinful and broken-brain behavior on Zeke’s part, and that’s about where it stayed the duration of the hour long shoot. The real Christmas card would have Zeke lying face down on the path, his sister scowling at her older sister with clenched fists, and me with an annoyed look on my face. My husband would have a halo on his head. It’s rather unfortunate that photograph was not captured. It’s always best to be real.
So, when I look at pictures from years ago or I look at other families who are traveling where I’d like to travel, living where I’d like to live, having fun in ways I’d like our family to have fun, and I begin to yearn for those things too, I’ve learned to say four little words that have stopped bitterness in it’s path.
That’s not my life.
It’s not my life. This is. This is where the Lord has me. It’s not because of a mistake or a wrong decision or a lack of prayer or lack of faith. All that talk is a false gospel. I’m here for his purposes, not my own. To honor and glorify him, not please or satisfy myself. And anything other than learning to be content in this life – in my life – is going against him and that is not a place I want to be. As hard as that contentment comes some days.
And I’m wise enough to know it may not be their life either. That is the thing about photographs. They capture moments, not lifetimes.
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