The Girl in the Photo

I sit at my daughter’s dining room table, on the far side, against the wall with the sunlight coming through the window. Everyone has left the table and as I sit there I am looking at the different framed photos that she has sitting on the pine sideboard and I realize that I am looking at a black and white photo of myself staring back at me.

I know exactly when the photo was taken and I feel as though I can remember exactly what I was thinking. It is a photo of me taken in our backyard before we left for my graduation ceremony from 8th grade. I am wearing a white dress with cap sleeves and a wide skirt with crinolines (I think two) underneath and my mother had taken me to get my hair done at Robert Manning’s Hair Salon (where she always went). I remember I didn’t like the way the woman did my hair but couldn’t speak up to tell her to stop. I am a tall skinny girl and not feeling very pretty because I didn’t like my hair.

The girl in the photo looks back at me and I sit there, frozen for a moment in time, wishing this could be a movie with some kind of time travel and I could fly into the photo and whisper words of wisdom in her ear.

And so I sit there a few more moments knowing the decisions I made and thankful for the blessings that came from the good ones and thankful for God’s protection through all the wrong ones. And there were a lot of wrong ones.

“This I recall to my mind,
Therefore I have hope
The Lord’s loving kindnesses indeed never cease,
For His compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.”

Lamentations 3:21-23