Missing what’s in front of me

In the Oxford Botanic Gardens, where J. R. R. Tolkien would go to write. Be still my heart.

I’m a journalist. I document things.

It’s my job. I went to school for it. I love it. I do it when I don’t have to.

My daily life consists of taking photos, filling journals, compiling stories, transcribing meetings and interviews, writing lists and making observations.

During our recent trip to England, the documentation game was strong. I wanted to (surprise) document everything (is that a leaf? Is that an old hot dog wrapper that’s been trampled? WE MUST PHOTOGRAPH EVERYTHING). But from time to time, Haley would make me stop and look without taking photos and you know what? The world kept spinning.

My tendency is to try and preserve every moment, but sometimes in doing so I lose the actual moment. In effort to save I lose (see also: Matthew 16:25). 

The quest for documenting every moment can quench the need to just be in the moment.

When’s the last time you just let yourself be? (Sophie, I’m talking to you.) Can you recall the last time you simply sat in a moment and savored the seconds therein? Here’s the thing about me, I can sit in a moment and then want to take a photo of it to tell everyone I’m sitting in the moment. Uh, hello. #ridiculous

We easily buy into worldly thinking that claims our identity comes from what we do instead of what God has done. We have wrongly believed that we’re human doings instead of human beings. -Jeff Vanderstelt

In our world of Instagram and Twitter and Snapchat and all media that claims to be social, I’ve found it’s easy to live through a screen. But at the end of our short little lives, won’t we find that was no life at all?

Dear heart, life is more than a well-lit photo or a perfectly articulated sentence. Life is meant to be lived. Breathed. Explored. Adventured. Tasted. Enjoyed in real time, not on a Facebook timeline. 

I’m currently sitting in Panera watching a couple at the booth in front of me (creeper status, I know) and in the 20 minutes they’ve been here, they’ve said maybe 15 words to each other. They’re currently staring at their phones, one is eating an apple, one is picking at a sandwich. They’re lost in their own separate worlds.

Are we so connected that we’ve lost true connection?

Am I the only one that struggles with this documentation syndrome? Maybe so. Regardless, my prayer is that we spend our lives with our senses and hearts engaged (which reminds me, you should read this stellar blog on being engaged), viewing our days through the lens of the Gospel not just the lens of a camera.

“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.”
-Ephesians 5:15-16