“I’ve been looking so long at these pictures of you that I almost believe that they’re real. I’ve been living so long with my pictures of you that I almost believe that the pictures are all I can feel.”
I hadn’t heard this song in years and then, one night, a beautiful version played at the end of a tv show I was watching. Not going lie, the song played on repeat for weeks after that.
It got me to thinking that sometimes, I find myself stuck in a picture. The picture of the way my life was supposed to go. The picture I had painted in my mind so many years ago. The picture that is now tattered and torn. A picture whose edges are now bent and browned with time. A picture that, no matter how much time I spend photoshopping, isn’t what I wanted it to be. It’s a picture that, quite frankly, I don’t want to revise. A picture that is just fine the way it is.
Because…there’s a bigger picture – a beautiful one – that’s being painted before me. It’s one that I didn’t plan because, let’s be real – the most beautiful parts of life are not the ones you and I can create. They were dreamed up long before you and I ever walked on this earth. And they will continue long after we are gone. The most beautiful parts of life aren’t meant to be looked upon and admired. They are meant to be lived, experienced and loved.
The most beautiful parts of life are not perfect but the best things never are. Because if they were, they wouldn’t stir this something deep inside of us. They wouldn’t make us feel. And…I want to feel. Even when it means it hurts. Why? Because I don’t want to get stuck in a pretty photograph. Stuck in something I changed to be perfect. Instead, I want jump into the beauty that He is creating and pouring out on the pages in front of me. Every. Single. Day. I want to laugh belly laughs. I want to cry ugly tears. And I want to do everything in between. The mundane. The ordinary. The extraordinary. The messy. The ugly. All of it. Because, with it all, He creates beauty far beyond anything I can imagine or comprehend.