Frozen

Yesterday I ventured out to get Will's baby pictures done. I walked in there confident, knowing exactly what I wanted and I left feeling like I'd spent too much money and wasn't sure I was going to LOVE the pictures I bought. What is it about the importance of taking photographs? My great grandmother only had one photograph of her parents. One picture. WOW! I already have boxes of pictures in my room and I continue to add to them. A picture freezes time. Everything stops, no more aging, no more growing up, it stays exactly the same in that moment forever.

Walking away from the portrait studio, feeling a little aggravated at the sales lady I told myself, "It's ok Marion, better to have too many pictures than not enough. Now when he gets married and his wife wants pictures of when he was a baby you can give her, her own copy and not have to take your copy off the wall." Then it struck me that one day the pictures we took today will be looked at for generations to come. Will may be someones great-grandfather and that great-grand daughter will have a photograph of my son when he was 7 weeks old. Amazing!

If you were to come in my house you would notice a wall full of old black and white photographs from Wesley and I's families. There is one of my Gramma sitting in the back of an old Cadillac when she is seventeen looking so alive, so beautiful. There's another one of Wesley's Grandma when she is nine years old standing on the side of the road with her mom and sisters. In the background is a gas station with a sign saying gas costs 11 cents a gallon! They have left this world and are helping the Lord prepare our houses in the Lambertus-Graydon neighborhood in heaven...but there they are on my wall looking back at me, young, vibrant, alive.

With the exception of Randol, my children won't remember Wesley's grandparents or my Gramma because they will have never met. They will only know what we tell them. They will know how my Gramma used to embarrass me by poking me in the side whenever she saw a cute boy and nod her head in his direction. They will know how at Easter one year , my Gramma scattered a trail of lettuce everywhere and told me the Easter bunny was taking it home to her babies. Or how Wesley's Grandma used to forget he had a local phone number when he was away at college and would call using a calling card. How his Grandma had the best corn bread and Wesley can't see a coke float without thinking of the summer afternoons when she would lovingly make him one. Our children will know how special our grandparents made us feel, how loved we knew we were in their presence and how even today I can still feel my Gramma smiling down on me.

Most people think it's morbid to talk about dying, but I think it is necessary. Necessary to realize that all you are promised is today. If you make excuses and say, "I'll call them tomorrow, or I'll apologize later or I'll tell them I love them soon" you may never get to tomorrow or later. Seize the day, make it His own and don't put off the things that matter just because your too busy or you have a big deadline coming up. What you do today impacts people tomorrow. What kind of legacy are you leaving behind?
P.S. These are just a few of my favorite pictures since Will was born.

"Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter; Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."

~Ecclesiastes 12:13