A picture is worth...

A thousand words? Really? Okay, well maybe some of them...

(Courtesy of Awkwardfamilyphotos.com)


I love photography... from taking pictures to looking through old pictures. But does a picture really tell the TRUE story? I was looking through the rehearsal dinner and wedding pictures the other day and got to thinking about what they "say". They speak to the beauty of the day, the happiness and the love that the husband and I have for each other. But.... do they tell the story of what was to come? Not at all. In less than 48 hours, I would begin to have a series of symptoms that turned out to be MS. You would never know from looking at the wedding pictures that this creature of a disease was lurking beneath the surface.

Okay, so maybe pictures aren't supposed to tell the story of what is going to happen in the future, but do pictures really even tell the story of what was REALLY going on at the time? I have a picture of Russ during the first night of our honeymoon where it looks like he is relaxing on the bed and talking on the phone. But what he is really doing is telling his parents the news of my disease. Looking at some family photos from long ago, it appears everyone is really happy... but I now know that they really weren't. There was a storm brewing beneath the surface that would later come to surface and cause an entirely different picture to be painted.

Think of Jon and Kate Gosselin..... Just a year ago, millions of people watched them renew their vows in Hawaii. They both seemed happy... it was a Kodak moment. But oh how that picture has changed now that their marriage is dissolving. There was obviously something else going on that those photos did not portray.

Everyone wants to have the perfect family photo.. you know, a spouse, 2.5 kids and a dog. But there is no such thing as a perfect family. You can use PhotoShop as much as you want, your family is NOT going to be perfect. Natalie Grant has a song called "Perfect People" that is stuck in my head today and it goes right along with these thoughts:

There is no such thing as perfect people, there is no such thing as a perfect life. So come as you are, broken and scarred and be amazed, be changed by a perfect God.

How true.. what we really need to do rather than worrying about matching outfits and perfect smiles is worry about Photoshopping Jesus into the picture to fix the imperfections... and trust God to create the perfect picture!!!