Today I am present, in the picture.

Are you in the pictures with your loved ones? Do you search through boxes of old photos just to find that one special photo of you and your mom or grandma? Are you present in your family’s lives but just to busy to stop and capture the moment?

Over Labor Day weekend, my friend Janice visited North Dakota for the first time. She sent me all the photos she took during her stay. It struck me in looking through them that I was actually in the photos. She captured moments with my kids, husband, parents and grandparents.

photo by janice person

Including moments that are rarely seen by me but are the moments that I cherish most as a mother.

photo by janice person

It was the tears of my youngest that pulled at me the most a year ago at this time when I started contemplating a major career change. Seeing the photos Janice captured reminded me that I am living out who I want to be, where I want to be, one year later. It is not perfect. It still requires a lot of juggling with speed bumps. But I am a more complete mother this year.

photo by janice person

And I am a better wife. I am not a June Clever type wife and far from perfect. Marriage like motherhood has its own set of juggling and speed bumps. But seeing myself in pictures reminded me, I am present more this year in my family than in the past.

Recently along with millions of others, I read Allison Tate’s The Mom Stays In The Picture and found myself resonating with her words, like oodles of others.

Yes I have changed a lot this year. I am more present as a mom. I am more present as a wife. I changed careers. I have blogged half as often I was blogging in recent years to spend more time as a mom and wife.

But I am not in the pictures...unless someone like Janice visits the prairie to capture them. And if I am gone tomorrow, I won’t be in many pictures. My family will be left with thousands of photos I took of all their big moments.

Our son can see his last football game of the season, today. The team lost in the first round of the playoffs. Hunter, our son is number 44, front and center.

But normally, my captures would have stopped at action shots and stills of the family members present, just not me.

That has now changed. I am present. I am in pictures.

My husband took this photo, after I took one of him in the picture.

It was after a few tears, following the big loss. But there I am with my son, grandpa, cousin, brother and dad. Four generations together at a game on a windy Saturday afternoon. I am present, with wind blown hair and little make up.

Also this week, during a fall break of sorts, I took off time from work to stay home with the girls and to soak in a visit with Leah and her kids visiting from Indiana. We had adventures. I captured Miss E at the pumpkin patch, complete with her broken arm in her sling.

 But I didn’t stop at that capture. I asked Leah to capture a photo with my daughter and me.

I am not going to worry about how much shine my face has on the photos, the scar on my forehead or how big my nose is. Instead I am trying to just remember I am present, doing the best I can. 

The importance of getting in the picture has hit me hard this fall. Not just from the basic changes in my life, but from the changes I am seeing in my loved one’s lives. It’s not all joyous. 
There is pain. Hurt. Loss.

And as I walked by the leaves fallen at our GriggsDakota family farm yesterday, I was reminded that the leaves fall and these leaves in particular were being swallowed by water. Their moment to be in the picture was nearly gone, just like a couple friends are feeling as they battle for their lives in a fight against horrible cancer. Our moments don’t come around again and we have to choose to be present, now.

Today, I am present. I am in the pictures. Because I can be. 

photo by janice person

It is important, not how I look or even how I feel about it. It is important to those that I love to remember, I am present.
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