Picture Day

So here we are getting married. I just got this picture from T because I simply can't wait for our photographer to get all of the pictures together. (3-4 weeks? Is she trying to kill me?)

Its really funny as I look through the pictures how much it matters to me how I look in them. I know it sounds really shallow, but its the truth. It has always been this way for me with pictures. Every year on picture day I would get up early and do my hair. Sounds normal enough right? But if you know me at all you will know that I never do my hair. I have absolutely no skill in that department. In fact my grandmother will often bring up the story of how she had to pull knots out of my hair at the end of one summer due to my neglect. But on picture day everything was different. I would curl, comb, spray and part my hair into some creation that I thought would look beautiful. And each year I would hope that when I got my picture back from school that people would look at it and be amazed at the untapped beauty I posed daily that they never saw.

Instead, year after year I looked crazy. My grade school pictures look nothing like me or what I looked like that year and they represent some of the worst hair disasters of the 80's. But even though I grew out of this phase of pretending that I could do my own hair - I guess I never lost that desire to finally see a picture of me looking gorgeous.

I can't get rid of my huge nose, my gelatinous triceps, or my uncanny ability to grow a double chin no matter what my weight. But I guess now I just want a picture of reality. To see a picture of me that reflects how I felt when I took that picture, not how I actually look.

When I saw this picture I saw not the defects in my appearance but how I felt when it was taken. I was so happy. I was so sure of my life's direction. And for once that makes me feel like that picture really the beauty of that moment- the beauty in me.