Quietly Hopeful

These are of one of my daughter’s closest friends.  I had the honor of shooting her graduation photos.  I’m posting the ones I like best, not necessarily the ones that make the best senior portraits.  I wasn’t really sure what I should write here when posting, and probably would have said nothing, but all of this graduating and moving away from home business has me a little wistful.  So I digress.

I look at my daughter and her friend, here, and remember when I was eighteen.  It doesn’t feel so long ago.  I realized that I am not grieving her leaving our home anymore, but have had a tightness in my stomach remembering when I left home and wishing it had been different for me.  I was not like my daughter.  I didn’t know I was lovely.  I didn’t speak with confidence and easily accept when I was ignored.  I didn’t feel very useful and wasn’t joyful unless I was running (literally and figuratively).  But, I held onto the promise that maybe, one day, my life would be “good”.  Good meant joyful, wanted, useful, and part of something that “worked.”  Somewhere along the way during a family tragedy I had missed the message that I was already capable of being those things, and it wasn’t until my own daughter was born that I began to realize God meant that for me all along.

It’s not enough to have food and shelter, or companionship and things to do.  Not really.  Just as it isn’t enough for some children to feel so special and at the center of everything that they lack humility.  My desire as a girl and for these girls, is that they feel their place in something larger than themselves, in God’s plan.  There’s the responsibility of acting their part along with the joy of being an integral, wanted participant.  They need to hear about this from us when we “sit in our house, when we walk by the way, when we lie down, and when we rise up.” (Deuteronomy 11:19)  It should be a natural, extension of who we are and everyday life.  I hope that I have given enough of this to my children.