We’re all pretty good at taking pictures of life’s big moments. Birthday parties, travels, first day of school, holidays. And most of us are getting better about also capturing the “mundane”. The everyday. The simple stuff that makes up our life.
Today I just want to put a little reminder out there, to capture the moments that aren’t necessarily our favorite moments in life. Now obviously there are challenges and even horrible things that happen in life that aren’t meant to be photographed and displayed. That’s not what I’m talking about. Sometimes we need to photograph and/or document moments because they play an important role in who we are, what we believe, and how we gain strength through hard experiences.
This POTD is a picture that not only represents more than $4000 worth of damage, but it documents an event in a family’s life that changed their outlook on life forever.
With permission, I am sharing an email I received last week. She ties her experience into Project Life, but it’s not about the product. It’s about the concept of documenting life. This is from Beth in Ohio:
Yesterday I was driving down the highway, hit a patch of black ice, and spun out across three lanes of traffic. I hit the guard rail and ended up facing oncoming traffic. I will swear to my dying day that I felt God’s hand push me across the highway. No cars hit me, and unbelievably there were no semi trucks on the road at the time. Our three-year-old was with me, buckled snugly in his car seat. No one was hurt, but our car is totaled.
What I am getting at is that even though I have just started this project for the first time, and it is just the beginning of the year, what I do for five minutes a day would have been there to bless my family if things had turned out differently yesterday. They would have had a visual and written record of the last 8 days of my life. This tiny little time commitment and the $53 is well-spent to record life AS IT HAPPENS.
Yesterday I used my first bi-fold journaling card to record the accident and my feelings about it. If I had waited to “scrapbook” it, these things would have been lost to memory. I can’t believe how much I am preserving with just FIVE MINUTES a day.
Becky, thank you for this product. What an incredible blessing it is to so many families. You have created something that allows our lives to be preserved and remembered in this time-crunched world. I feel more so much more strongly about Project Life now than I did a week ago — it has taken on a meaning that, although I knew was there, I had never felt the urgency of until now. We never know what will happen in any given day, and what better way to be cognizant of that than to remember the everyday moments each day.
My POTD for that day was actually a photo that my husband took of the damage to the car. I find that the visual reminder of the damage brings those moments back. I know that sounds odd, but I want to remember how grateful I was just to be alive, and feel that all the other stuff is just stuff.
I can only add one thing to what Beth has so beautifully communicated: Like every one of you reading this, I am so grateful that she is okay and their sweet little boy is okay. Their lives were spared that day for a reason. There is more life to live. There is more love to give.
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On a similar note of documenting our not-so-favorite moments … but on a much, much, MUCH lighter note … check out this moment that my friend Kara happened to capture in our home last month.
If you look closely through Claire’s hair, you see a face of huge disappointment and sadness. Crew, of course, just looks shocked. Yes, Crew. When you throw a snow globe on the floor, it really does shatter. For real. Don’t mind that it was Claire’s favorite Christmas decoration.
The reason Kara was even able to capture this moment is because she was hanging out with our family for the day. She was documenting A Day in Our Life. It’s one of the greatest gifts a family can have for themselves: The documentation of a day. I am so excited to share with you that Kara is adding this “offering” to her photography business. Learn more about it HERE.
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Folks, life is happening. Good stuff, funny stuff, blessed stuff, hard stuff, devastating stuff. It’s all there. This is life as we know it. Let’s do our best to cultivate a good life and record it.
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Added note: As you know, the Project Life kits are currently sold out. We are very close to having more inventory in stock. We expect those kits to be available on Amazon (for U.S. customers) by the end of January. Any sooner would be a pleasant surprise. We all want to be pleasantly surprised! Thank you for your patience (and your interest!). As always, I will communicate updates & information as we get closer — especially here on my blog and on facebook and twitter.
