The Lens of Grace

Lover of beauty, but so often, unable to capture it.

I can see how the photos should look in my head, but they don't come out the way I see them. There is too much blown out white. . .

Or one photo that was supposed to complete the set, completely unfocused. . .

Or the background and colors are all wrong and so is the focus---again. (And don't forget the storyboard pieced together and uploaded before notice was given that the edges aren't even.)

 

There is a question of photography and beauty can be loved so very much and yet, not placed into the desired medium with which to share it. These snapshots in the heart as eyes gaze around each hour, captured but not, with the dreamy, beauty they are viewed with.
Perfectionism is needed for photography.

Perfectionism can ruin photography.

Often, the old D100 camera
(one of the first in the line of DSLR's to come out a decade ago, saved for for five, long years)
is placed into the bag with a vow that there it will stay.

But then, the heart memories beckon one more try. So it is attempted.
Again.
And again.
And again.

Practice makes perfect, they say.

Obviously there hasn't been enough practice yet.

But I continue to shoot. Because I want to record these swiftly flying days and hold on to them, at least through photos. And that is where I re-consider the reason and the motivation. It can't be to impress or to be as good as. . . but simply to remember what my heart saw day after day. The composition or the focus or the color may not be right and the editing may be far from what I long to learn, but the eyes looking back? Those are perfect. The smiles, the mannerisms, the habits? They are pure beauty.

The mischief. The dances.

All captured.

Not perfectly. But there.

My heart, outside my body.

In all this I am gently reminded with the question:  
"Are you viewing your children through the lens of demanded perfection or through the lens of love?"

This is a rebuke as well as a reminder, for more often than not, I view with perfection and my demands for it. I don't stop to see the dance because there is a mission to have those toes march to the mess in the other room and put it to rights. I miss the twinkle of pure delight because I see nothing but water on my just-cleaned floor.

Age is forgotten as personal preferences crowd in. These are little hearts with maturing minds. They don't know what they were thinking when they did that--other than it a was fun and thrilling and lit up the entire world for a few minutes.

There is a choice each day to pull out one of two lenses and snap them into focus on my heart. The lens of perfection and demands or the lens of love and grace. The first will never find satisfaction. The second will cover over that which is imperfect, causing it to fade away in light of that which is perfect. And it is there, in the lens of love and grace that the beauty is perfectly captured.