What’s your word for the year? I’m sure in January you probably saw social media posts about this question. You may have even selected a word and are living it right now as you read this. I have to admit, when I first found out this was “a thing” to do, I was intrigued. What word would I choose? Would I even be focused enough to follow through with it? Could having a word guide me through my year? What if I changed my mind half way through the year and decided to choose another word? Clearly I wasn’t sure how all this should work! But this past December, I landed upon the “perfect” word. Here’s what happened.

Early in December, I was searching through old photographs to find some pictures of my three kids at Christmastime. On a side note, I had just started working on major photo project with every photograph I’ve ever taken. You remember those days when we used to take photographs and actually take the film to the drug store or places like Costco to get them developed? I was that person who took 10-15 rolls of film at any given event and would also get double prints to share with others! Talk about a pile of photos!!! At the moment, they are all in a heaping piles, sorted by year, in my She Shack just waiting for me to “spark some joy” out of them. Marie Kondo will be very proud of me…eventually…

There was a time though that I kept meticulous photo albums. As soon as I would get my photos back from the photo lab, I would sort through them and write the date taken, where they were taken and who was in them before putting them – IN ORDER – into my albums. When my kids started coming along, it got harder to sort through photos and get rid of any. I mean…these were pictures of my kids! How could I throw even one away, even if it was a little blurry or I didn’t like the way I looked in that photo…my child looked SO ADORABLE! So what I started to do was to select the best picture of the several I would take of a grouping and put the best one on top and tuck the other 2 or 3 behind it and then place them in the albums.

So in December, as I was going through my albums I came across a photo of me with my three kids at Brookwood Mall. Emily was just a baby, Charlie was 5 and Anna Marie just 3 years old. We were trying to get a group shot in front of one of the little Christmas trees that were placed around the mall. Well… it was a struggle to say the least. We couldn’t get all the kids to look forward at the same time and eventually we had three out of four of us so that was the photo that was displayed in the album. Then I pulled the photo out of its slot and two others tumbled. These were the ones that weren’t deemed “perfect” to display. But you know what? The photo I decided to use wasn’t the perfect photo. The photo where I was trying to get Emily to turn around in my arms and my head was turned away and Charlie looked completely bored and Anna Marie was on the ground grinning ear to ear oblivious to what was happening around her…yeah, that was the perfect photo. Actually, it was “perfectly-imperfect.” I even made that comment when I posted it on Instagram.

I thought about this the next few weeks. A lot. How many times do we see social media posts that are perfectly staged and the lighting is beautiful and everyone is shiny and new, so to speak? I know I’m guilty of it…we all are to some degree. But these older photos were really speaking to me about the beauty of imperfection. Think about it. Today we can instantaneously see a photo taken through digital photography or our IPhones. We can retake and retake until we get it just right. But back when I was using film, you had to patiently wait for the film to be developed and then drive to the store to pick up the photos. You really didn’t know what you were going to get until you flipped through the envelope. There was a bit of excitement too when I would do that, hoping that I got just the right photo of an event. Sometimes I did, and sometimes I didn’t.

On Christmas Eve this past year, I had all my kids home and it all came full circle. After they all put on their Christmas PJs, we began trying to get a group photo in front of our tree and with their dogs! The struggle was real but oh what a fun struggle it was! I just kept clicking my camera as my kids kept trying to get their dogs to face me for that perfect shot. Well, we got that perfect photo, but you know what? My favorite photo was the one I captured right before that perfect photo. It shows Emily hugging our family dog, Lucy, and Anna Marie and Ryan rubbing their dog Lucia’s head while trying to get him to sit still, and Charlie getting a grip on his dog, Scarlett. It was just like the photo I would have hidden behind the perfect photo in my old photo album days.  But now I realize…this was the perfect best photo.

 

So, my word for 2019? It’s actually two words…perfectly imperfect. But as a friend said this morning when I was telling her this story, you can always hyphenate and make it one word!  That was “perfect” advice.