pictures

 

*Re-post*

I take a lot of pictures.
It all started when I was a 10-year-old with my very first camera.
Back when you would take the film into the store and then wait anxiously for a week for the film to be developed,
My friends and I would take rolls upon rolls of pictures.

Nothing changed about that once I had kids.
I literally have thousands.
Tens of thousands

And to be honest, I was always looking for the perfect picture.
I always wanted them to be posed a certain way,
All smiling
Their heads directed in the proper direction.

Perfect.

And I have a lot of those ‘perfect’ pictures.
A lot of them.

But you know, now that my kids are getting older,
I look back on the thousands of pictures
And it’s not necessarily the perfect ones that I love.

The ones that I love are the ones that were imperfect
The ones where one of them was pouting
Or making a face
Or sneezing
Or acting up
Or not even paying attention to what was happening

The ones that did not go as planned

And when I look back on my life in general
There are countless
‘That did not go as planned’ moments.

And you know what, in the moment when those times happen
When my plans are uprooted
My gut reaction is to be discouraged, upset or even angry that things did not go as planned.
Or I look at the ‘perfect’ plan I had in mind and am sad that things did not turn out like that perfect picture inside my head.

Looking back on the ‘not-so-perfect’ alternate plans that my life has taken:

Those are some of the best moments.
Not all of them have been pleasant.
Not all of them have been easy.

None of them have been perfect.

In life things will not go as planned.
Things will not always be the perfect picture inside your head.
But that’s ok.
It’s those ‘not-so-perfect’ moments that make life absolutely beautiful.