More Than Pumpkin Picking
Family pictures are always beautiful, aren't they? They are these beautiful stills of a family and lives being lived.
Sure, real-life may not always include throwing confetti, or walks hand and hand through the woods, or an entire family pumpkin patch day, but they are shots of what we wish and long for life to be, aren’t they? We long to all take the day off from work and enjoy a day at the pumpkin patch with our family. We long to have the time and the intention to walk hand in hand with our love through a forest in the fall or to throw confetti with our kids without caring about the mess it leaves after. Whatever the family or couple picture scene, these photos are glimpses of what we long for life to look like and at the very same time, they are pictures of what actual life does look like, too. We may not always have the time or the forest or the pumpkin patch to walk through, but we do laugh, make memories and smile with the ones we love, and that's really what the pictures are all about capturing anyway, aren’t they?
These pictures were taken almost exactly a month before my mother passed away from Pancreatic cancer. One of the silver linings to the horrible disease of cancer is that on that day at the end of May 2015 when she was diagnosed life lived together, and these family moments, became intentional and priority.
This day picking pumpkins was photographed but by God's grace and unfailing love towards us, the 17 months we battled pancreatic cancer as a family, looked a lot like these photos - memories made & life lived. With intention.
When cancer enters the scene, it's like something slaps us in the face and screams, ‘"Wake up! Wake up! Live every day like it's the last!” or in my mother's words that she wrote on a Facebook album she posted of these very same photos, 2 weeks before she passed away;
"Please always know God has a plan and we have to trust and have faith! And always be joyful and smile. Don't sweat the small stuff it's so unimportant! Please always know God has a plan and we have to trust and have faith! And always be joyful and smile. Don't sweat the small stuff it's so unimportant!"
I'll leave you with that - with the wise, yet simple, and so very joy-filled words of my beautiful mother.