The words that are worth more than pictures

“It was supposed to be more, but this is all I’m afraid!” She said as she handed me a few pages from a notebook with her handwriting on them.

I took them into my hands and started to read —they were letters she had written to me when I was just a baby.

The timing was a bit coincidental, perhaps?
As I had spent the past weeks debating on whether or not to move forward with my own idea of buying up a few small notebooks to start jotting down my own letters to my children.

The reason I deliberated?
What if I fail?

What if all I come up with at the end of eighteen years in my care with just a few handwritten notes and not the full notebook I set out to accomplish?

And as I read the words of my mother, telling of the day I came into the world, the doctor visits that gave them a sigh of relief and the testimony of God’s faithfulness in my early days of existence, I realized right then —it’s worth setting out to do, even if just for a few loose pages of paper at the end of it all.

Because what my mom felt was a failure quickly became to me a priceless treasure.

I run to the store later that week and purchase the notebooks. I write my first letters.

And I realize that these letters open up the door to a greater vision for my children, because each time I will write, I will picture them as an adult reading my words and I will give more thought to the end —the goal.

I will see them no longer as the needy toddlers that they are today, but as future men, future husbands - future fathers raising their own toddlers.

I think then of the verse we hear most often at Christmas time —how Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.

I used to think this meant perhaps that she was shy.
Now I know that it simply means she was a mother.

We are those entrusted with capturing time.

We most often do it through the lenses of our phone—snapping photos of the day at the park, the first steps taken, the end of the school year.

But every mother knows, these are but vain attempts - we will never be able to capture enough.

But perhaps a picture isn’t worth a thousand words from a mother.

Perhaps our best method of documenting time is a small handful of letters handed over when your own child steps into the role of parent.

Perhaps our best method of keeping track is less photos, and more thoughts documented on scraps of paper and tucked away for many years later.

I will try.
I will fail.
But I will hope that my children will find my attempt to be a treasure.