Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

beauty

Everything I know about living a beautiful life

It was Monday, and the world had been painted white with snow. It clung to the trees like ornaments on a Christmas tree. Few surfaces were left uncovered.

Our family had spent the previous day watching the snow fall, wondering when it would stop, guessing how many inches would accumulate. While it was coming down on Sunday, we observed one accident happen on our road (no injuries but it was a hit-and-run), two fire trucks respond to a call at the nearby apartment building, a utility truck parked near where the hit-and-run accident occurred, and a couple of Amish buggies pass by like it was just another day.

When we went to sleep, it was still snowing, and we already new our start to the week would be delayed.

A two-hour delay for work and school meant extra time for shoveling the driveway and clearing the car along with all the other getting-ready-for-school-and-work tasks. There was also extra time for social media and viewing what felt like a zillion posts about the snow.

“A winter wonderland!” the pictures were captioned with one man even suggesting everyone go outside and take a walk WHILE IT WAS STILL SNOWING. I have no doubt that it would have been magical, but not even the promise of wonder could entice me from my cozy jammies and warm house.

It certainly looked pretty from inside my house, but the beauty of it was lost as I grumbled about the work yet to do. After my husband had been out to clear the driveway for half an hour, I went out to clear the car. Not much about my attitude had changed as I pushed and brushed and swept snow off the roof and the trunk and the windows. I stopped for a moment and looked at the tree in front of our house, the one that marks the seasons, whose beauty first welcomed us when we moved in.

When the car was clear, I went back inside to get my phone to take a picture. Documenting beauty is an occasional practice and I was out of practice.

Everything I know about living a beautiful life is found in these photos.

If you look close enough, just past the tree displaying its winter splendor, you’ll see the trash can and recycling bin. Mondays are garbage days and before I took this photo, while my husband was shoveling the driveway, I dragged the can and the bin to the street. Usually I cut through the yard but I didn’t feel like traipsing through snow up to my calves, so I walked the short distance from the driveway to the road sign where we place the bins for pickup. Only once did I have to dodge traffic.

While I was taking these pictures, one of our neighbor dogs was barking at me. It is the loud and annoying yipping that accompanies any outdoor activity and prompts the neighbors to then yell at the dogs to “shut up.” And inside, my husband was negotiating with the kids about who was going to take the first shower like it was a hostage situation. Anxiety was building inside of me because this was only Monday and it was going to be a long week.

I took these pictures to capture the beauty. Maybe I was even feeling a little bit left out of the perceived serenity of the winter wonderland pictures.

I did not feel serene as the dog barked and the children fought and the snow slowed my routine. But that didn’t make the scene in my yard any less beautiful. The truth is the beauty of life is smack dab in the middle of the ordinary. Sometimes it’s even in the middle of a mess.

I used to think living a beautiful life meant having a perfect life. That an Instagram-worthy life was evidence of a beautiful life. That poetic words and portraits of a well-kept home were the proof that life was beautiful. I used to think a beautiful life was beyond my reach. Or that I’d have to wait for “someday,” when everything fell into place.

But I’ve changed my mind. I think that a beautiful life happens when we choose to see the beauty right now. When we stop to take the picture of the tree while the dog is barking and the kids are fighting and the garbage can sits at the curb. Beauty is in the ordinary. Beauty is in the mess. And I’m not saying that you have to see garbage day as a gift or adopt a thankful attitude for the tenth load of laundry, but I think we can find a way to notice how the sun streams in through the mud room window while we’re doing laundry or take an extra second to remember how the snow-covered tree looks in spring. To see the white clouds and the blue sky and the snowy limbs stretching up and out and ask yourself if what you’re seeing is even real. (I could have sworn we were living in a painting.)

Sometimes a beautiful life is seeing what’s right in front of you and sometimes it’s hoping for what you can’t see. (Like spring when it’s snowing in March.)

A beautiful life is not a perfect life, it is a life being lived. Even when that living includes a sink full of dishes, an overflowing mound of laundry or a garbage can being hauled to the street.

This is the stuff of life. The wonder and the work. The ordinary and the extraordinary. The perfect and the not-so-perfect. The tidy and the messy.

All I really know now is that I can’t wait to have a beautiful life because I already have one. A beautiful life isn’t beyond my reach; it’s right in front of me.

What a picture is worth

“You should know before we start that we are not a precious family.”

I prefaced our family photo shoot with these words, wanting the professional photographer who was taking our photos to understand our expectations. She laughed, whether at the bluntness of my statement or something else, I don’t know for sure. I’m not even sure why I felt the need to say it except that I wanted to lower my own expectations for these photos.

See, there was a time in my life when I wanted the picture perfect family. The picture perfect life. 

But I’m 40 now and life has been far less than perfect and even the pictures that might make it seem so don’t show the whole story.

More than anything right now, I want a real life. I hoped the pictures would show that realness, even as a little part of me hoped they might show us in a slightly better light.

I need to pause here and say a word or two about our photographer. She was amazing and put us all at ease. Her creative vision was inspiring and I trusted her completely with our family photos. (Check her out here.) I also asked her to take some photos I could use on my blog and in other writing related ways. I’m slowly increasing my professional presence on the Internet and new photos of me was something I’d put off for a while. (Because let’s be honest, I don’t like to be the center of attention except on rare occasions.)

It was a fun hour for us. The day was beautiful, even if the ground was soggy. We walked through a park and managed to make a few of the spaces in and around our house usable for photos. When the shooting was over, the waiting began, and I hate waiting in these instances because I want to see how everything turned out.

I didn’t have to wait long. Less than a week.

And this is what we got. (It’s a sample. Click around on this blog and you’ll see some of the fantastic work Rachel produced.)

Photo by Rachel Lynn Photography

I’m always nervous to look at the final product. I’ve never felt like I photograph well but I’m ever hopeful that the real me will shine. (I don’t worry about my family. They’re all completely photogenic.) 🙂

I focus so much on my own image sometimes that I miss out on the whole, and my first impression isn’t always favorable. I will admit that on my first run through these photos, I was disappointed. Not in the quality of the work but in my own appearance. I’ve taken great care this year to become more physically healthy but I didn’t go to any great lengths to prepare for this photo shoot by getting my hair professionally styled or applying makeup. (Because, again, those things aren’t me. I’ve seen professional photos of people that don’t even look like how they look in person, and I’m on the fence about how I would feel if that were me.) I want my online image to match my IRL (in real life) image.

Can I really be “disappointed” if that’s what happened?

Let me be clear: I am thrilled with these photos. And I have to adjust my vision when I look at them. 

Photo by Rachel Lynn Photography

Because at first glance, I would not call us a beautiful family. I couldn’t hold a straight face looking at my husband when it was just the two of us being photographed. My son rarely flashes a “normal” smile. Like my disclaimer, we aren’t “precious” in matching outfits with gorgeous smiles. I’ve always had what I call an awkward smile. It’s lopsided and often looks forced unless you catch me in a moment of unguardedness. (This is rare. I feel like I’m always “on guard,” constantly aware of what’s happening.)

I’m never as awed by photos of myself as I am of photos I see of other people. Maybe this is part of the secret to seeing the beauty in the world–turning your eyes toward others instead of self. Maybe none of us can truly see our own beauty because the lenses with which we look at ourselves are distorted. 

But maybe there’s another secret to seeing beauty. Maybe it’s learning to focus on what you can’t see.

I can see the beauty in our family when I zoom out and consider the context. It’s been almost 10 years since we had a professional take family photos, and in that time, our family has struggled. And we’ve overcome. (Or maybe I should say we’re still overcoming. I don’t know if it’s ever a complete process.) Our physical bodies aren’t the only things that have changed in that time. The fact that we are still a family of four is nothing less than a miracle, and the smiles we share, that we’re okay with being ourselves for a photo shoot, is the result of hard and difficult work.

Maybe surviving is its own kind of beauty.

It’s been a couple of days now since I first looked at the photos. I’ve chosen some to include on my various online sites (like this one), and the more I see them, the more I love them. (Sometimes first impressions are a lie.)

Photo by Rachel Lynn Photography

In a world where we capture everything in photos and can take unlimited selfies, sometimes it’s worth letting someone else be the one behind the lens. Sometimes we need to see what others see in us, to see ourselves through a different set of eyes.

That’s worth more than money.