I pulled out a journal that my mom sent me for my 40th birthday the other day. There is so much for me to write and see and say, and I wanted to begin to record.
But pulling out my journal brought me back to the last several years of my life and marriage.
If you have followed this blog since its inception 3 years ago, you would know that my husband and I have had to work really hard at our marriage.
One point, while we were receiving professional help, my husband was journaling. It was a good thing. Yet is was a VERY depressing thing.
While it was both cathartic and healing—it was just SO SAD!
And every time I read it, it was hard to read.
Hard times in life are hard. And we need to share them with someone we trust—but that doesn’t make it easy.
So when I pulled out my journal…during a hard day of just being me, being mommy, being wife, I decided to do something different.
I decided that I was going to write about the joys of my day. And while my children sat screaming and crying and throwing fits, I remembered that ONE moment of the day where they were pure joy—
And I wrote that.
And I giggled while I wrote.
And I shared with my husband what I wrote.
And we smiled.
Through the tears, through the difficulties, through the hard—we smiled…because, really, there was something to smile about.
Take for example, my family photo above. My 2-year-old delight (sarcasm inserted here) cried and pouted and shouted throughout our entire photo session. She was tired. She was sleeping. And she is two. TWO. That, in itself, is an answer for everything 😉
She did not want to smile for any photo. It was impossible. And as much as we tried, we just could not get that ideal and dreamy family photo that I had envisioned on the drive to the palace gardens where we were taking photos.
So we had to come to the conclusion to either leave her out of photos or just go with the flow.
And we did both.
When she wasn’t in the photos, we clicked magnificence.
When she was, we just had so much fun with her two year old pouty expressions…capturing not perfection but real life.
At the end of the day, when the gardens were about to be locked up, we wandered to the exit and just let the children run and play. After all, they could get dirty now that mom had what she wanted. That is when the sun actually came out.
No, dusk was on the horizon, but our 2-year-old Josephine ran and played and laughed and smiled.
And that is when my husband took back out the camera that he had already packed away and started to shoot.
And that’s when we saw her smile.
You know…It’s good to record life. The ups and downs and all arounds.
But sometimes we especially need to record the joys—because they remind us to smile!
And 2 Makes Crazy 