My Social Media-less Life

Today was Mother’s Day here in the United States… if they don’t have that holiday anywhere else… sadly, I really don’t know much about the holiday. Anyway, I spent almost the entire day (sans church time) at my mom’s house.

I have no pictures of the time the whole family was over and my brother gave a “sermonette” on Proverbs 31 giving our mother the honor she deserves while the children started to get antsy because it was almost 2:30 by the time we ate; or of the time I spent outside with my three nephews doing some small yard work for “Grandma”. I don’t have any pictures of my nephews and I playing with Nerf guns in the house until I had to tap out and my brother went in and showed no mercy to his boys while they giggled and ran all over the house trying not to get shot…

But I do have these fun pictures with my mom and my bestest friend (since we somehow never take enough pictures together, having been friends for almost 9 years now)… and I certainly have all the memories to go with the day.

My mom (and probably my friend) might give me a hard time for posting the pictures at the top of the blog, but sometimes my absolutely favorite pictures are the ones where people are being the most real. My mom’s husband (who was nice enough to take all of the pictures for us) never tells people when he’s taking a picture, he just takes 38 of them and we have to hope we were standing with a decent stance for one of them. Haha!

Mostly kidding… but really I’m not.

But as you see, I was also nice enough to post all of the better pictures of the day because I like to also see ones where people are smiling and looking their best… even if the “most real” is not “the best”.

For me, it’s not about the best. It’s about the memories that come with the pictures. Although I am learning to really live in the moment and figure out what that means.

I said all of that to say…

I had a great day with my family (which does include my bestest friend, because if you don’t consider your best friend part of your family, you probably should reevaluate life) and I wouldn’t trade anything that happened today for any other day.

I think for me, today was the perfect example of what “living in the moment” really looks like. It looks like staying off my phone and not wanting to take pictures every 35 seconds. It looks like completely forgetting my phone even exists and walking around in the backyard with my nephews while we pick up sticks.

I listened to the first episode of the Bimey Cow podcast earlier this week and Josh Taylor said something during their “Deep Thoughts” segment (I think?) where he said, “You know what I learned; living in the moment really only means you’re investing in other people. It’s not for you.” Basically, once you die, that moment is gone.

But if you are living in the moment for someone else and you happen to pass away before them… they will always have that memory of you and that time that you took to really pay attention to them in a new way.

The only other thing I can hope is that, by my investing in other people in this way (particularly my nephews and niece), they will in turn learn to invest in people the same way and the legacy of moving the Kingdom of God forward simply by paying attention to people will live on for another generation.