Pictures are worth...

My friend Laura invited me to a Creative Memories Corporate Event here in Dallas.

My favorite part was the professional photographer who came in to give some tips. Living with, you know who, meant that I didn't learn a bunch of new things but I did get a couple of great tips.

What I enjoyed most, was watching a presenter who clearly loves what he does and displaying his art for a whole gaggle of very encouraging and appreciative women. Should have heard the sighs when he put up a face shot of his darling 4 yr old with with tight curly blond hair who clearly loves flashing her eyes in Daddy's direction!

So I came home on Saturday afternoon inspired to catch up on my photo chores and got to work. I didn't stop working until after 12:30am. Due to a couple of recent hard drive crashes and various other challenges, simply getting things from Dave's computer to mine and determining when we last printed was a bit of a mountain to climb. But by the time I'd gone to bed last night I had 200 plus pictures from the last eighteen months gathered into one place and ready to get printed. I was very pleased to be at the crest of the mountain!

For those of you who have literally climbed mountains, you know they rarely stand alone. Which means there is one right beside the first. In all the work I'd done, I hadn't even touched our pictures from Kenya. In part because you don't just come home with your own pictures but with all the rest of the teams pics too. This amounted to thousands of pictures...totally not exaggerating!

I decided that going for a second mountain top experience at 12:30am wasn't wise so I called it a night.

Then this morning at church, Merrikay presented a short synopsis of all the mission trips this summer. During the offering, a slide show of all the trips set to music was shown. All the pictures were great. But there was one in particular that got me. It was a picture of Rose and Miriam. Miriam had wrapped her arms around Rose from the side. Both the giver and the receiver of the hug, were thoroughly enjoying the moment. I love these two women. I can't go into all the reasons why this picture impacted me so much but it got me shedding a few tears.

Then to make a long story even longer... (short story people have already given up on reading this anyway) my Mom handed me a CD of pictures. My parents recently returned from visiting my brother and his family. I was already missing them.... all five. But the power of seeing a picture of them all gathered around a picnic table having a meal together was unexpectedly and intensely bittersweet. I loved seeing their smiling faces. They have all changed since the last time I saw them. It made me miss them even more than I am already missing them.

So a friend asked me this week, "What you got planned this weekend?" My answer was, "Not much, which is a nice change of pace." I'm really grateful there wasn't much planned because I enjoyed a wonderful set of circumstances that reminded me how important and powerful pictures can be.

When I get tired of climbing the mountain of sorting, editing, cropping and inserting pictures into an album, I'll try to remember, what it is like to have that moment, when a picture is truly worth a thousand words.