Life Is Just A Snapshot, Really.

It’s Mother’s Day this coming weekend and all across America mother’s will be receiving cards and flowers and Cracker Barrell lunches from kids that drove them up a wall only years earlier.

There's the mom who will receive a card from the kid that she seriously considered dropping off at the nearest fire station, hospital or place of worship on more than one occasion.

One mother will eat chocolates from the kid that she once told, “I am so tired of having to drive you to another basketball practice…ya know, no one will tell you this but you’re not even that good.”

And some mom, some where, will hug the very child that she once looked at and thought, “Oh crap, he looks just like my aunt Donna.”

Mother’s Day. It’s a precious thing.

I feel very blessed to have gotten my Mother’s Day gift a week early. The Attorney General couldn’t wait until Mother’s Day to give me the camera that I have been dddyyyyiinnnnggg to have for over a year now. He gave it to me with a sweet hug and the words, “Don’t make me regret this purchase. If you lose it, break it, curse it or get frustrated and throw it, I will have to kill you.” I think he means those sweet words. And as I crawled into my bed the other night, took it out of the box and began reading page 1 of the 300 page manual I thought of all the things I wanted to take pictures of this year.

I want to go to Remi’s preschool and take pictures of her little friends that we will be moving away from; they might be all she has to look back on. And someday I want to be able to say “This is Tobey Jones. You were in love with him when you were 3. He didn’t really care that much for you, but you certainly were persistent.”

I want to take a picture of my house. The house we built from the ground up and that we brought two brand new babies into. The house I love dearly. The house that when we pull up to it I always say, “Here we are: the most beautiful house in the world.” And now my daughter says it, too.

I want to take a picture of my Pastor. Because I love him dearly. Because he dedicated my babies, encouraged my spirit and talked me down from the ledge many a’ time.

I want to take a picture of the cows that are back behind our house and that stand in the stream on a hot day, every summer.

I want to take a picture of my dogs chasing after Remi every time she offers them a lick of her Popsicle and then changes her mind at the last second.

And I suppose it was there, in bed, that my mind wandered back to this weekend. Because as much as I want to celebrate my mom, all she means to me and the love I have for her, it is not really the mother’s that I think about the most this time each year.

You see, if I had been given this camera years ago there would be a different set of pictures I would have taken. None of them would have children in them, for there were no children to be seen. No, my pictures would look very different than they do now…oh, but they would be just as precious.

There would be a picture of the AG and I at our favorite Mexican restaurant which we frequented quite regularly back when we had nothing but time, time, time on our hands.

There would be pictures of the little Cape Cod house that we first lived in; with it’s tiny front porch and it’s gravel drive. And the ferns I hung up at the first of every spring and had killed at the first of every summer.

There would be a picture of the doctor’s office we went to every single week in our attempt to get pregnant - the nurses that held our hands - the doctor that didn’t.

There would be a picture of the two of us handing out Halloween candy to the little Britney Spears and Power Rangers that came to our door every year; and maybe even a shot of me crying, in hopes that the next year I might be dressing someone up as a bunny or a ladybug.

There would be a picture of me praying. There would be one of me reading Scripture. And there would be one of me crying. And then there would be one of me still not pregnant.

There would be one of me holding a positive stick, with tears in my eyes and a shocked look on my husbands face.

There would be one of us holding each other only seven weeks later.

There would be a picture of us walking hand in hand at the zoo the day we found out our transmission went out and we had no money to fix it and the zoo was the only place we could think of to go where no one could find us. And in the picture we would be laughing, because although we were broke, we were together.

There might even be a picture of our little Christmas tree that we stuck up every year even though there were only 3 or 4 gifts under it, tops. But we thought it was the most beautiful tree in the world.

There would be a picture of us picking out a headstone, two days after Christmas. And I would have to use a flash because everything about that day was so dark.

There would be a picture of us graduating college.

And pictures of us with friends on camping trips, at lake houses and playing cards at midnight on a Tuesday.

So on this Mother’s Day, let me ask you: What would your pictures be of?

Would they be of the life you’re living now? Or the life you want to be living? Would your pictures show you enjoying, relishing and feeling blessed in the life you’ve been given? Or would they show you crying, screaming and aching for the life you are yet to have?

You see, my lovelies, my heart doesn’t just go out to mom’s on Mother’s Day – but also to those whose desire to be a mom supersedes almost every thing in their life. But tonight as I was thinking – and praying – about what I wanted to say in this letter to you I was reminded of that camera. And how we have been given the gift of capturing a moment and living it to the fullest. The pictures you are taking today will most certainly not be the pictures you are taking tomorrow. The pictures you take today may be childless, they may be husbandless, they may be jobless, they may even be happy-less.

Oh, but tomorrow…

Tomorrow’s picture may be so full of children that there’s no room for you in the shot. It may be taken by a husband when only a year ago you were snapping pictures all by your lonesome. You may be taking pictures at a job you love and that you never saw coming. You may capture a happiness on your face that looks almost unrecognizable to you in the mirror.

I hope all of those things for you.

But until then, take pictures of where you are. Now. Don’t wait for tomorrow. Take pictures of the life you are living today – for whether you like it or not, it’s the only one you’ve got. And God gave it to you. If He knows the number of the dry, over-processed hairs you have on your head He most certainly knows the desires you hold in your heart. He’s never overlooked them. In fact, there in not one single day that goes by that He doesn’t intercede on your behalf to His Father. (But unfortunately this Father of His tends to know better than all of us put together, so we pretty much gotta hold out for this Guy.)

My lovely, you are right where God wants you to be. Maybe not where you would choose to be, but right where He would have you nonetheless. So please don’t hurt on this Mother’s Day. I can’t stand to think that you’re somewhere hurting; wishing for a life that is polar opposite from the one He so lovingly gave you.

Instead I hope you determine in your heart that this year you will take a picture of where you are now so that someday you, too, might be able to say, “I once stood where you stood, my friend. And I remember every sweet, heart breaking, inspired, beautiful, horrific, lonely, joyful, God-filled, treacherous, enchanting moment of it.”

Cheese!!