My Amazing Family (and why I will be physically printing more photos)
That was a faltering and lame start to daily blogging.
Take two.
I blame wedding week.
Our son got married yesterday, so it's been a week of late nights, early mornings and unusual activity. Schedules were pretty much shot out the window. Every day was "do the next thing", which is a wearying way to live.
Thankfully, it was only one week. And it was a beautiful week that I wouldn't have traded for anything.
A snapshot of Jonathan at the beach when he was three.
Friday night - the night before the wedding - I stayed up all night with photographs scattered all over the bedroom floor, deciding which one's I would scan into a slide show I was tasked to create for for the reception. By 1:30 AM, I hit my second wind and began to relive a lot of memories. I felt a little like Clark Griswald locked in the attic with Super 8 movie projector in "Christmas Vacation" (although, I never understood why he wasn't able to get out of the attic).
As I looked through the photographs I came to two conclusion:
I have an incredibly cool family that has lived an amazing life together. Seriously. My wife and kids are just flat out cool. As I physically touched photos that were taken all over the world for the past 27 years, each one containing a litle piece of our life together - gratitude and and a deep sense of humilty were kind of overwhelming. If grace is receiving what you don't deserve, I've been the recipient of much more grace than most. With a new addition, four is now five. And I am exponentially gratefull for even more grace.
We should all print more photographs, and the reality is, I intend to do just that. It is a weighty thing to handle a physical photograph, versus simply looking at pixels on the screen. Analog photography, like vinal record albums, is something that should never go away. It's a kinesthetic process which doesn't need to be lost in the age of the pixel.
There is something profound about having your entire life on the bedroom floor at 3:00 AM. Without an incredibly cool family who has done amazing things, along with printed photographs, that moment wouldn't have been possible.