The day before Mother’s Day a dear friend of mine went looking for a picture of herself with her mother. While her mother was an avid scrapbooker, it was hard to find a picture of her and her mother together. She said her mother was never happy about her weight, so she never wanted to be in the pictures. Now her mother is gone and all she has is a handful of images of the two of them together. So she challenged us to hand over our camera and get into those photos with our kids, and that’s exactly what I did.

I must say that getting two teenage boys to pose for pictures was not easy. We had fun, we laughed hard, and some of the mischief that went on I didn’t even know about until I uploaded the photos to my computer and saw for myself. All I knew was that my husband just kept clicking away and in the process of doing that he captured not only some “good” photos, but something even better. He captured our relationship.

I will treasure these, and I do believe this will become a new Mother’s Day tradition. I can’t say I’m perfectly happy with my wrinkles, my makeup, my hair or my weight in these, BUT today is all we have and there is much more joy in embracing this journey of motherhood just as I am instead of wishing away my reality and hiding. There is no honor in that. I want my boys to remember me and have photos of us together. No matter what I look like I’m their mom, and while I see my imperfections, they still love me just as I am… and that is all I need. In the end, that is all that really matters, isn’t it?