Earlier today I was looking through photos on my computer of our sweet man. I have some frames to fill and ended up re-living some special moments as I hunted for images to fill those frames.
I found the above image in a folder from when our little one was a teeny tiny baby. I almost passed by the image. Not because it didn’t catch my eye, it did, not because it doesn’t speak volumes to that time in our lives together, it did. No, I almost passed by this image because I thought I looked fat. Yep, there, I said it. I had just had a baby a month before that. My body had done something incredible. Over the 40 weeks prior, my body had turned food and calories nourishment and energy into a living breathing human being. I was a vessel for a new life to travel from the mind of the Father to this world, where he is on our minds everyday. I can’t see a pregnant woman, or think about Jonah’s amazing beginning, with out being in complete awe how humans come to exist.
But in this photo, one of the first things I did was criticize myself. Yes, I saw the beauty in the moment. The beauty of the way that I was looking at Jonah with the love and adoration and awe of a mother. I saw my sweet dog in the background and the slight clutter of the room, which I neither cared to or had time to tidy up before the photo. This photo is so beautiful to me. But I quickly moved past it, I thought, “I won’t ever share or print that one, let’s keep looking.”
How completely tragic and how hugely does it miss this point. One of my biggest aims in photography is to tell the truth about life. The beauty-saturated, amazing, messy, incredible truth. I want my clients to allow me to see that in them, and document it, and give it back to them, from my heart to theirs. But then here I am, trying to present a “perfect” view of myself, pushing aside the beauty for something that I feel is more acceptable.
So in an act of defiance to myself, I share this photo with you. And I ask you to look at your beautiful and wonderful and messy life and ask you to embrace it, and perhaps let me document it if you are so brave, we are in this together.