True confession #1: My husband left this afternoon for a conference and will be gone nearly a week. I am lonely and coping by eating lots of food, watching lots of dumb TV, parking myself under a blanket on the couch, and committing to being good to myself. I don't like being lonely, I don't like being sad, and even though I really really like life better when my house is clean, I am giving myself a free pass tonight. Dishes can happen tomorrow. Tonight, a bit of shameless wallowing.
True confession #2: I am a dedicated and nerdy Instagram user. Dedicated in that I take exactly one picture each day. Nerdy in that I...take exactly one picture a day. Sometimes the pictures reflect the best part of the day. Sometimes the pictures reflect the overall feeling of theme of the day. Sometimes, it is 11:52 p.m. and I am getting ready for bed, and I remember that I haven't taken a picture, so I do something silly like take a picture of the clock on my nightstand, or my pillow, or my bedtime snack.
It's probably a fair critique of social media that everybody puts their best, most edited selves out there for all to see. I get it. I do it, too. My Instagram feed shows a toddler who's always smiling, only the clean parts of my house, the cats when they are cuddly, happy family shots, beautiful scenery...
But I realized something tonight, as I was looking through my photos, feeling a little sad and tired and vulnerable:
Even if what I put out there is the best of the best...when I look at my life in photos, I remember that my life is, indeed, made up of pretty great stuff. My toddler might not always smile (or behave), but his smile is one of the best parts of my life. Iowa life isn't always blue skies, but the beautiful days are so darn beautiful. Sometimes the house really is as clean as it looks, and I am grateful to have a safe, warm home to call my own. Our little family of three might run in a million directions more often than not, but the times that we get to settle down and enjoy family time are just as precious and beautiful as the pictures would suggest.
In other words, I don't mind that my social media legacy only tends to show the best stuff of my life. Because when I'm feeling lonely or sad, I look through all of that stuff and realize that the best stuff of my life is so good. My overly-optimistic Instagram feed reminds me that my life is so full of the things that really matter to me: family, home, nature, food, ordinary lovely things.
Maybe the lesson in all of this rambling, if there is one, is that there are plenty of terrible, awful, worse-than-we-expected things that happen in the world. And if we prune our Facebook and Instagram and Twitter feeds to show only the best stuff? Well, so be it. Because in some small way, we are reminding the world and ourselves that there is yet good out there. That there are smiling babies and perfect sunsets and extraordinary gourmet meals.
Imagining the world as it should be, as we wish it to be, is a holy task. And our perfectly pruned feeds show us that glimpses of this world-as-it-should-be are already among us. That what we imagine is what we already have, if only in part right now.
Yes, even something as silly as an Instagram feed on my phone can remind me of goodness and resurrection and new creation and hope and light and life. And, (true confession #3:) I'm perfectly okay with that.
True confession #2: I am a dedicated and nerdy Instagram user. Dedicated in that I take exactly one picture each day. Nerdy in that I...take exactly one picture a day. Sometimes the pictures reflect the best part of the day. Sometimes the pictures reflect the overall feeling of theme of the day. Sometimes, it is 11:52 p.m. and I am getting ready for bed, and I remember that I haven't taken a picture, so I do something silly like take a picture of the clock on my nightstand, or my pillow, or my bedtime snack.
It's probably a fair critique of social media that everybody puts their best, most edited selves out there for all to see. I get it. I do it, too. My Instagram feed shows a toddler who's always smiling, only the clean parts of my house, the cats when they are cuddly, happy family shots, beautiful scenery...
But I realized something tonight, as I was looking through my photos, feeling a little sad and tired and vulnerable:
Even if what I put out there is the best of the best...when I look at my life in photos, I remember that my life is, indeed, made up of pretty great stuff. My toddler might not always smile (or behave), but his smile is one of the best parts of my life. Iowa life isn't always blue skies, but the beautiful days are so darn beautiful. Sometimes the house really is as clean as it looks, and I am grateful to have a safe, warm home to call my own. Our little family of three might run in a million directions more often than not, but the times that we get to settle down and enjoy family time are just as precious and beautiful as the pictures would suggest.
In other words, I don't mind that my social media legacy only tends to show the best stuff of my life. Because when I'm feeling lonely or sad, I look through all of that stuff and realize that the best stuff of my life is so good. My overly-optimistic Instagram feed reminds me that my life is so full of the things that really matter to me: family, home, nature, food, ordinary lovely things.
Maybe the lesson in all of this rambling, if there is one, is that there are plenty of terrible, awful, worse-than-we-expected things that happen in the world. And if we prune our Facebook and Instagram and Twitter feeds to show only the best stuff? Well, so be it. Because in some small way, we are reminding the world and ourselves that there is yet good out there. That there are smiling babies and perfect sunsets and extraordinary gourmet meals.
Imagining the world as it should be, as we wish it to be, is a holy task. And our perfectly pruned feeds show us that glimpses of this world-as-it-should-be are already among us. That what we imagine is what we already have, if only in part right now.
Yes, even something as silly as an Instagram feed on my phone can remind me of goodness and resurrection and new creation and hope and light and life. And, (true confession #3:) I'm perfectly okay with that.