Never a perfect picture!

Most of you know…I take A LOT of pictures! And I post a lot of pictures. Just recently one of my best friends in San Diego posted on her own FB/Instagram pages a mini blog that completely resonated with me. It is exactly why I take so many pics too. (With her permission, I share her words below.)

Some of my pics are purely just to record fun moments. But some are so much deeper for me, for our family… I have an album in my picture files on my phone. I call it “All the feels.” It is full of those pics that are captured “just after the storms.” I’ll let you read my friend Tasha’s words, and then I will explain more…

“Pictures capture a single moment that is sometimes just perfect. I love taking pictures because I love the hunt. It’s like a treasure to be found. To me, photography is that way, a treasure. It’s crazy how that perfect picture can sometimes magically encapsulate the essence of someone, like you are truly seeing the soul of that person. Or you can say that same thing about a picture of an event or even a photograph of landscape or a single thing in nature. A snapshot can be so beautiful and tell so much. Hence, the saying, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ On the other hand, sometimes you just get lucky with a snapshot of one second in time that actually contradicts what is really happening. It can be so deceiving. You don’t see the hurt, or the bitterness, or the sorrow, or the depression, the frustration or anger, or even the loneliness that is really going on in someone’s heart. The definition of a snapshot is literally ‘a photograph taken quickly.’ It is one single moment within a series of moments, of moments within a series of a day, of a day within a series of days (plural) strung together…and so on and so on…and sometimes that perfect moment captured does not portray what is really going on in a person’s life. I took a bunch of pictures (as I always do) Christmas day and Christmas “weekend” and some of them, you’ll see here, just capture the right look, at the right time, in the right lighting, and it is just “perfect”. But our family is FAARRR from perfect. My marriage is far from perfect. My friendships are far from perfect. My kids and my relationship with my kids is far from perfect. And I am far from perfect.I think these are great pictures, but keep in mind, it doesn’t reflect a perfect person with a perfect life. Rather, a perfect God who made nature perfect and who made each human being, unique…It reflects the God who made his creation (people and nature) beautiful just the way you will see it here. They are portraits that tell the story of His redeeming love.❤️“

(Before I continue, know that the stories I will share, I share with permission from my family, my friend, and our pastor.)

I resonate with all of Tasha’s words. I love how she describes it as a hunt. I also feel like I am trying to tell a story through my pics. It is our story. Sometimes it comes across on the surface as “picture perfect.” And yet, we are not.

Especially during this time–over the holidays, in the darkest winter months–it is so easy to fall into bouts of dark thinking. We feel like we don’t measure up. As we reflect on the year, we realize our failures more easily than we see the good that has come over the year. Feelings of loneliness are exaggerated, especially as we scroll through social media seeing all of the “perfect” family gatherings that may not look like our own.

But there are stories and imperfections and real life moments behind all of these pics! There is fighting and frustration and grief and regret. My friend admitted that she and her husband almost always get in a big fight right around Christmas time. Are they the only ones? Of course not. Her admission prompted me to share in a reply on her post that guess what? The Weis family actually got into a giant fight WHILE we were holding our candles and singing “Silent Night” as we tried to watch our church’s Christmas Eve service virtually online!? Yep! True story–we were actually yelling and screaming at each other. Pent up frustration from the day, from these crazy times. I don’t actually remember the trigger now, but I know there was unspoken grief and sadness in not being able to be together with our family the way we typically would. And I know that even though our boys wouldn’t voice it outloud, they do also love the tradition that is part of most churches across the world, of ending the Christmas Eve service being allowed the privilege and trust of holding a real live lit candle and singing sweetly in the dark at the end of the service, “Silent Night, Holy Night, All is Calm, All is bright. Round yon Virgin, Mother and Child. Holy infant so tender and mild. Sleep in heavenly peace…Radiant beams from thy holy face. With the dawn of Redeeming Grace. Jesus, Lord at the birth…Shepherds quake at the sight. Glorious stream from heavens above. Heavenly hosts sing Hallelujah. Christ the Savior is Born!” I also know it is not “normal” to watch the Christmas Eve service online. It was hard to be quiet, especially when they were just being excited kids, who still couldn’t wait for the morning when they would be able to open presents no matter the new and unusual logistics of the 2020 year. And I also know we were overtired parents, feeling our own grief over the strangeness of the year, and the isolation, who desperately wanted to quietly soak in the news of Hope, of our Savior being born, of the comfort of the scriptures. The clashing of these two ideals met in frustrated yelling and pleading, which just “pushed buttons” further, and created louder and louder chaos in a moment that “should have been” full of peace.

And I took pictures… I knew that somehow we would want to remember this night, this time…

And I knew we would want to remember the truth that our pastor had actually preached that night. The theme of his Christmas Eve message just a few minutes before had literally been, “I want you to ask yourselves this question, ‘What was your WORST moment in 2020? Your worst moment as a dad, or a mom, or a wife or a husband…your worst failure, etc.?” Before the yelling and screaming during Silent Night happened, I was instantly thinking about the huge fight that my husband and I had had a few days prior. We had literally sunk to a new depth of low, just DAYS after we had shared (& posted pictures of!) our mountain top 15 year anniversary day date! Real life moments…behind “perfect” pics…

And yet, THIS was the message of Christmas! The message our beloved pastor was sharing on Christmas Eve. We often think, and Christmas carols often sing, “What kind of gifts shall we bring to a king?” We try to polish everything up. We work to try to bring our best. But that is NOT the gospel message. The Christmas message, the gospel message, is that we are able to bring our WORST, and we are able to receive God’s BEST through His gift of Jesus Christ our Savior. He lived the perfect life for us, so that we could RECEIVE HIS BEST! That is the way we honor Him. We don’t have to pretend we have it all together. We honor Him by bringing our real life messy moments and acknowledging that He is enough. His grace is SUFFICIENT. He has done the work, has paid for our sins, so that we can be righteous in God’s sight and be reconciled with Him forever. The messy moments are real. I truly believe, had our computer screen been a two way live connection, that our pastor would have said to us, “Weis family, I see you. I see you in this difficult moment of yelling & screaming at each other even during this singing of Silent Night!? Bring THIS MOMENT to Jesus. Bring your worst, and receive HIS BEST!”

This is why I take so many pics. This is why we share so openly our lives. Some, we know, feel like we share too much. But this is our story! This is our ministry! We want to share the real, the ugly, the messy, so that others may know, it is ok to struggle. It is ok to talk about these things. We are never alone. Our family has felt that isolation in our struggles before. We know the comfort of knowing that HE KNOWS, HE SEES, and HE LOVES us in spite of our imperfections and our struggles. We are blessed to have friends we can call on, or text,or email, in the heat of the moment, to beg for prayer when we are struggling. (We just had to do that yesterday!) The only way we have developed these friendships has been by being real, by sharing openly, and by allowing ourselves to be vulnerable. We have been so blessed by these relationships, by “our people” who know us and love us and encourage us just as we are. And it is our family’s greatest desire that we would either be “your people,” or we would encourage you to be brave and take that step of sharing your real story–your real fears, your real failures, your “worst!” with trusted people in your own lives, so that you can find “your people.” Bring your worst to Jesus, so you can receive His best!

I know I will keep taking pics–I will pursue the moments, the hunt! I will keep sharing pics. When life is hard, I need these pics to remind me of the beautiful and peaceful moments that are there to be found. Please know that yes, some of them truly will be bright beautiful fun moments! But some of them may be the calm before the storm, and some of them will be the beautiful faces of redemption–of the peace and the joy that comes from staying in the fight, of bringing all of our cares and frustrations and anger and shame and disappointments to God, and allowing Him to work in our hearts and our souls to restore our connections, both with Him and with each other. THOSE will be the pics that go into my treasured album, “All the Feels.”

I/we–my family, along with our pastor, and with my friend, Tasha, we pray for you this Christmas, this end of 2020…bring God your worst, so you may receive HIS BEST!

2 Corinthians 8:9 “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.”2 Corinthians 5:21 (A verse my sweet husband has taught our boys to say with us before bed.) “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”2 Corinthians 12:9 “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

(Not pictured: the giant fight AFTER our anniversary, the yelling and screaming DURING silent night…Pictures DO include: our mountain top 15yr anniversary day date; beautiful silent night candle lighting; the “forced family fun” selfie after the silent night escapade that really did bring about belly laughs so we were able to sleep more peacefully; “new mercies every morning” Christmas Day sunrise; and just last night sweet sweet laughter from our youngest redhead after a not so sweet battle that required text “in the moment prayers” from “our people” earlier that day.)

“The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end;” Lamentations 3:22