As my wife and I sat and shared with our small group the other night we both came to a similar moment of inspiration. We giggled like junior-high kids and since then the idea has stayed with me, filtering down through my subconscious and banging into things. Our little private joke played into something I was already pondering.
I love photography and I do believe it can say things that can’t ever be captured in words. So while this is obviously a text heavy blog, I wanted to share the photos which said the most to me this year and a few of the reasons why.
These first five come from sources worldwide. The next five are more personal:
The other night my wife and I went to a movie. Which might not seem worth noting except it’s the third film my wife has seen in a theater since our son was born. And now that we live in a small mountain town, going anywhere at night causes you to experience an inky blackness which is simply impossible in a big city. It’s easy to drive through downtown Dallas and never realize your lights are off. In Park City you can’t leave the parking lot.
This weekend my wife and I celebrated our 12th Anniversary. It’s simply shocking to think that I’ve been married for twelve years, and even more amazing, that my wife has been able to put up with me! We had a wonderful time away from our kids, both the furry one and the one in diapers, and had the chance to really celebrate.
We laughed a lot. In fact, it felt like two people excited to be dating. And all of this got me thinking about the changes of our last few months and the strangeness of marriage.
I’ve had this thing nagging at me for a while, an issue in the back of my mind which I keep bumping into and then turning away from. But since moving to Utah, I’ve come face to face with it a few times and now I’m really thinking.
Like most of you, I sometimes leave the house and have to go back for something I forgot. I step back in the door, thirty seconds after I left, and my wife makes some comment about “quick trip” or “what did you forget this time” and I laugh it off as I grab the missing item.
Then, as I step back out the door I always say the same thing: “Really leaving now…”
And today those three words struck me differently.
Some people struggle with what they believe. I generally don’t. I can support my beliefs with logical facts or experience. Personally, spiritually, professionally, I could tell you what I believe.
I struggle with Faith. “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen”.
That stuff.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we are now postpartum. The Baby has landed. The Stork has delivered. Whatever way you’d like me to say that we have gone from pregnancy to parenthood.
So you might be wondering how I can write another entry about pregnancy. Well, I’ve decided I’m the town crier of pregnancy truth – “Hear ye, Hear ye….” Because it’s become quite clear that a few months of holding a newborn gives women amnesia. I suspect that something in the smell of fresh skin actually wipes out bad memories.
Well, Bodie, you’re here. And I spent yesterday, your birthday, in a strange time machine, concerned about three generations of people at once.
My parents, who told me stories of my birth with tears in their eyes.
Your mother, who endured the odd sensations of C-Section, pain, and fear.
And you… who got forced into a world you didn’t know and asked to breathe.
Leaving me mostly groundless and unaware of my own age or generation in this march of time. But now I remember, and we should talk about what it means.
Los Angeles doesn’t just have an obsession with youth, it actually pro-longs youth. I see pictures of people in their early thirties from somewhere in the Midwest and always marvel that they look older than people around me in their early forties.
Elsewhere is seems that couples in their twenties are dealing with their second house and second child, and out here men in their forties rent apartments on Sunset and date mid-twenties models.
I find myself influenced by both. I’ve never been the nightlife kind of guy, and I’ve been happily married for more than a decade. But we still rent our home (not for lack of home ownership interest, but for lack of affordable options) and the majority of our friends are childless dream-chasers like ourselves.
Yet in the last year… things have changed.
