Author’s Photo

Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all. Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.  Proverbs 31:29-30 (ESV)

I do not like to see pictures of myself as I am now.  To see myself now is always a shock.  While I look in the mirror every day, for some reason, seeing my image in a photograph is different from seeing my reflection.  Perhaps my eyes are getting bad enough that the view is fuzzy in the mirror.    Plus, I still think of myself as looking as I did thirty-five years ago.    When the streaks of blond in my hair were natural instead of the grey that is there today.  When my eyes were moist enough to host contact lenses.  When my chin was single.  Fifty pounds ago.  Before two pregnancies and two C-Sections that changed my stomach muscles and left a pooch.  Before arthritis bent my fingers and my back.  Before life.  When I look at pictures of me thirty-five years ago, I see a girl on the cusp of life.   At the top of the world.  A girl who graduated from college with honors.  Who was selected as the top female student in her class.  Who won awards for Citizenship and History.  Who had already received a federal grant to do historical research.  And who had been accepted to several graduate schools.  That girl.  The one whose future looked so bright and shiny.  Now, I am living in that future and time has taken some of the polish off.  Even those awards won so long ago are tarnished and dull.   The best awards I have now cannot sit on a shelf.  They are two boys, now men, making their way in the world.  A daughter of the heart, smart with head knowledge and wise with heart knowledge.  A marriage, still strong though with its share of ups and downs.  Good friends, some of whom date from those college years.  A lifetime of helping our community preserve and appreciate its past.  A book about to be published.  A relationship with God much deeper due to the passing of time and all it has thrown at me.    I would not want to go back and do it all over again.  Still, when I look at photographs, I miss that youthful face, that wide smile and those hopeful eyes.    The difference hit me again this week as I posed for pictures in order to have an author’s photo for my book.  The only reason I agreed is because I like to look at author’s pictures on books.  You can’t make a purse out of a sow’s ear, I thought when I saw the images my nephew captured.  It is not that he isn’t a good photographer.  He just didn’t have the best subject.  I supposed I should embrace what time has done to my face and body.  I earned those wrinkles and sags.    Maybe if I think of them as wisdom marks, it will help.  No, I don’t think so.  It is what it is.  I can live with it.  Because really living is all that matters.