I keep getting tagged on Facebook in those love-your-spouse-rah-rah-marriage things. Which is awesome because I love my spouse and I love marriage and I especially love snorting my way through everyone's photographic evidence of Aquanet and wedding dresses with shoulder pads. (I mean, how is it that nobody in the eighties looked in the mirror and thought, good heavens, WE SHOULD DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS?)
Marriage is awesome! And my husband is particularly awesome! But we aren't perfect people and our marriage takes work. Which is why this is my all-time-favorite photo of the two of us together:
Awww. Isn't that adorable?
But the reason it's my favorite picture isn't because of what you can see, it's because of what you can't see.
If you could slip through the camera lens into this memory, you'd see my 19-month-old twins screaming and crying as they tried to climb up my legs. You'd see a four-year-old dumping an entire bottle of water inside my diaper bag as he searched for a fruit snack. You'd see that it was a cold day in October and that my pants were covered in snot because both babies had bad colds and had been using my legs as a kleenex for the entire photoshoot. You'd see that the reason we were laughing is because there is nothing less romantic than two screaming toddlers trying to claw their way up your thighs as a photographer says things like, "Look like you love you each other!"
But in this picture you see none of that. You don't even see how red my nose was from the chilly temperatures, thanks to a quick switch from color to sepia tones. What you see is only part of the story, captured from only one angle. And isn't that the case with all of our marriages? We have perfect moments, and perfect snapshots, and we tend to share only those perfect portions of our lives with others. But what we share is never the whole picture.
And the whole of this picture is what makes me love it. Knowing what we've worked for and been through and survived and that right there in the center of our family's little universe my husband and I will be laughing and crying and sticking it out together for the rest of eternity. Because family IS the whole picture.
Imperfect parts and all.
