Our Mother, Our Father, Our Creator. In this season of summer, in all its loud and bright and colorful and sticky and carefree glory, remind us to pause. Give us a hammock and a light breeze, a popsicle and a glass of ice tea, and draw our attention to the creatures of the earth. Let us take notice of how they move through this season, how they creep and crawl and squirm and fly. Because when the world becomes large around us, we must remember the mercies in the small things of the earth. 

Oh God of the morning birds, we sing praises to you. As the cardinal and the robin and the chickadee greet us each morning in song, we are reminded of the mercies that greet us each day. Thank you for the gift of a renewed spirit. Thank you for giving each of us a song that is as unique to our talents and abilities as it is harmonic with those singing around us. As the birds call to one another with the rising sun, we too remember to call out to you and to one another. Teach us to listen for your calling, as well, so that we might know where to find you. 

Oh God of the bumblebee, we pray for the church, its members and its mission. As the bumblebee moves about the garden pollinating the flowers, help us to grow our community with love and commitment to one another. Let us draw out the nectar of your word so that we might turn it into honey, sweet and nourishing for our souls. May we plant a garden of grace and forgiveness in our church. Show us how to be a safe place that draws others into our community, inviting them to be a part of the growing process.

Oh God of the ants, we pray for activists and leaders fighting for justice. As the tiny ant carries a weight ten times its own, give us the strength of endurance. We carry so many burdens on our backs, oh God. Human rights are at risk in our community. The dignity of choice, particularly for those in marginalized communities, is being threatened. And some days, the fight feels like too much. But we must keep going. We must move with the focused attention of the all too often overlooked ant. We must continue to build support for the good of all people. Remind us that we may feel small but together we are mighty. 

Oh God of the butterfly, we pray for the sick and suffering. As a butterfly moves through the cycle of life, from tiny egg to hungry caterpillar to sleepy cocoon and finally to beautiful butterfly, we remember those moving through all stages of pain and healing. Bring nourishment of good food and medicine to the sick so that they may grow stronger each day. Wrap a warm cocoon around those aching in body, mind, and soul that they may find rest and renewal. Teach us to be patient in times of healing and trust that you will help our wings grow when they are ready. 

Oh God of the firefly, we pray for the departed. As the firefly lights up the night, be a light to those in grief. May the constant flicker be a peaceful reminder of the life they mourn and acceptance in letting go. Be with the grieving hearts as they sit in the darkness, flickers of memory and love all around them. Show us how to capture that light of peace in a memory jar to keep them in our hearts as you keep us.

Confession: I really love reels on Instagram. 

I don’t mean making them, because that’s terrifying (and also fun, but in a terrifying sort of way.) 

What I mean is I love watching them. I love seeing all the ways people take one audio clip and make it apply to their “thing.” I love the dance videos that make me want to get up and move my body. I love the expertly filmed scenes that make me wish my life was more beautiful than it is. But I also love how you can take content from an average person like me, pair it with good music, and suddenly your life looks like a super fancy movie trailer. I mean, wouldn’t it be great if we all had a sound engineer adding a soundtrack to our days? Is this something celebrities have? I need to look into this. 

The problem is, I am not in the habit of taking video, and I’m concerned about this. Call it morbid or call it good planning, I just don’t feel like there would be enough footage to work with if one needed to make a compilation video of my life in the near future for, let’s say, at worst–my funeral, or at best–my Pulitzer Prize award ceremony (do they do montage videos there? They should. I know the writer’s life is not as exciting as, say, a figure skater, but we work just as hard. Make it happen.) So, in January upon coming to this realization (perhaps after watching too many year-in-review reels on the ‘gram), I decided this would be the year that I would be more intentional about collecting video. 

And then I promptly forgot. That checks out. 

The thing is, I’m great at photos. I take photos all day–the sunlight moving around my house, my kids in a rare sweet moment I don’t want to forget, my plants just being amazing (so many plant photos.) My camera roll is always full, so much that I had to buy extra Google storage just to hold it all (don’t come at me with all your brilliant photo storage systems. I won’t follow through. Just let me be.) So the problem is not the act of documentation, but how. I take photos, but rarely video. I’m just too often focused on getting the perfect shot, that I forget to press record and let the moment play out.

Vacation moments though? I’m good at that. I slam that red circle button all day like a proud dad at the dance recital. Look at us, we're driving in the car! Look at us, we're walking down the street! Look at us, we’re waving at the camera, kids wave at the camera, WAVE! There you go, HI!...and…cut. 

It’s not difficult to understand why. Getting out of our ordinary day to day always heightens the senses more. It’s why we travel, after all. Everything just feels more precious, more interesting, more memorable. So we snap snap snap away. And yet, despite our best efforts to remember it all, we know those photos of the mountains never turn out the same way as they do in person. But, you turn on video mode, capture the moment when the kids come around the bend and see the mountains in view for the first time, and that moving picture becomes a magical scene stealer. Compile all those video moments together, and you’re a film producer. Add in music and you just turned your vacation into a box office hit. Pass the popcorn. 

I recently pulled together one of these montage reels from our time visiting our cabin. As I scrolled through the videos tab, I was surprised to find so many more videos than I remember taking. Not long 20-30 seconds videos, but short 2-3 seconds moments here and there–Elliott giving me a thumbs up approval of pancakes, Caroline giggling about the fish she just caught, Leo constantly dancing himself into a pose (always with that one.) And then it occurred to me (something I probably should have known long before but let’s remember I’m a grandma millennial)–the photos I had on my camera roll were Live Photos. This means they weren’t just a still shot, they were also a video. 

Insert mind exploding emoji. 

Now in my defense, I knew these videos were there. I knew you could hold your finger down and see the 2-3 seconds around the time of clicking the shutter button. I just always used the feature as a way to scroll through the still photos to find the better shot. It never occured to me that these tiny videos were actually worth something. 

But as I started to add them to the video, I learned I was wrong—there was something in those small moments. If a photo is a word then a small video is a sentence. Pull those sentences altogether and you have a story—a story that illustrated so much more than the scroll through a slide show of pictures.

Does this mean, I can hear you ask, that video is always superior to photography? Of course not. You can’t put a video in a photo album, can’t place it behind a frame and hang it on your wall. There’s even something magical about a memory frozen on a two dimensional space, as if we have finally uncovered the capability of stoping time like we’ve wanted to do ever since Zach Morris made it cool. 

Should we bring Mary Oliver into this conversation? I know, I know, I use her far too often. But as the line goes in Love Actually when Emma Thompson’s character gushes over Joni Mitchell–”I love her, and true love lasts a lifetime.”

So what would Mary Oliver say about all this memory keeping?

I’m not certain how she feels about photos versus video. I think Mary might tell you to do neither and instead you should write about it. I do and I will, Mary. But even a writer can admit that words cannot always hold the weight of a moment. 

Look, and look again.

That’s what she says–Mary–in her poem “To Begin With, The Sweet Grass.”

This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.

It’s more than bones.

It’s more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.

It’s more than the beating of the single heart.

It’s praising.

It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving.

What I hear her saying here is a moment is more than just the structure of an image, the bones, if you will. It’s not just a little thrill for the eyes. The moment has a heartbeat. It’s alive. 

Maybe that’s what makes these little videos hidden behind the still photo so magical. I scroll a grid of photos and I see memories. I look again at the video behind the moment, and the memory comes alive. I see the wind brushing his messy hair, watch the slow curl of a smile when he catches my eye, hear the sound behind the grin of a girl growing into her own confidence. Inside those squares there is a whole life–a movement, a look, a dance. There’s a story to be told. 

It’s easy, though, to find a story to tell of a great family vacation, but what about the rest of the story? What about the ordinary moments in between the big stories?

Sure enough, I go back through my camera roll and I find many of the pictures I’ve taken are Live Photos—moments behind a picture just waiting to be uncovered. Holding down my finger over the still frame, I watch the photos comes alive, as if my finger is a magic wand (or a Zach Morris “Time In” cue.) A grin becomes a giggle. A pose becomes a dance. A hand holding becomes a hand reaching. They were ordinary moments before, just photos holding space between the bigger moments. But behind the still photo is a story I forgot to tell.

Look and look again.

There’s no reason to save video montages just for vacation recaps, award ceremonies and funerals, I think. I find a song, I start scrolling the videos I didn’t know I had, selecting one small moment at a time. Clip by clip, my everyday life starts to look a bit more like the movie trailer kind of life. Nothing is expertly filmed, but it’s beautiful all the same when celebrated in this way.

So is that secret, you ask? The answer to paying attention to our life is to simply create a reel with the latest trending TikTok song? (Mary is ready to leap out of her grave at the thought.) I’m not certain about that. But I am reminded there’s a beating heart behind the ordinary, and that feels like a pretty good way to live a life. 

Or, as Mary continued with her poem…

You have a life - just imagine that

You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe

still another.

Take the videos. Look behind the photos. Find the story. Then tell about it. (In poetry or reel. The medium is up to you.)

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Ordinary Inspiration".

PS. For more words on finding inspiration in the ordinary, be sure to sign up for my Raise & Shine Letter! There’s always a good story or two, probably something about Taylor Swift, and lots of artfully curated GIFs.

We leave to go out of town in…pause for me to count…37 hours. On my to-do list I’ve completed  approximately…pause for me to count…one thing. Well, maybe 7/9 of a thing because that thing was grocery shopping but of course the order didn’t have everything I needed so now I have to add another thing to my to-do list which is go into a store to finish the first thing on the list. So I guess now I’m back…pause for me to count…zero. 

The laundry I/we/someone-in-this-house started last weekend is lying dumped on the couch at my feet like a cliche. I hate being a cliche. I need to do more laundry. It’s on the to-do list. Actually, technically I need to make the to-do list first. I haven’t really started that either. 

Follow me for more organization tips.

It’s quiet time in my house right now. And by this I mean the 2-3 hours when I convince my three year old to play alone, all while I answer a million of his questions before finally giving in and pressing play on Bluey. And yes, somehow this feels like quiet time compared to the other 21-22 hours in our day. 

I’m still wearing my swimsuit from a wading pool visit this morning. Which is probs super bad for me. But there’s something very nostalgic about a drying swimsuit against a warm body cooling in the AC, or in my case cooling in the basement because it’s the coolest place in the house. Wearing my suit makes me feel like a kid again. The kid in me loves knowing we’ll go back to the beach later today as a family. The kid in me loves that this is available to us and believes when something is available, you say yes. 

Beach visit wasn’t on the to-do list, the to-do list I haven’t written yet. 

During quiet time, I work. What does this mean? No, really, I’m asking you. What does this mean? What is my work? I’m still trying to figure that out. And by figuring that out I mean I’m reading newsletters on the internet and clicking on links for cute tank tops. I know the work I “should” be doing. I have a list for that, lists I’ve actually made. It’s filled with stories I want to write (need to write?) But the “should” looks a whole lot like this pile of laundry. It’s not coming easy to me at the moment. I can’t find the bravery to tackle the pile of words. 

Instead I kick the laundry aside, both literal and figurative, and turn to the words of others. Call it procrastination if you must. I like to think of it as chasing inspiration. Reading how other people wrestle with curiosity in their stories often leads to me pick up a pen and write about my own. Today it’s Katie’s words on ordinary beauty and Ashlee’s list on how to quit writing and Molly’s feelings about Stranger Things that inspires me. It’s not the work I’m “supposed” to be doing, not anything I had on a to-do list, but I’m writing all the same. It’s a whole lot easier to write words when you’re curious instead of scared. 

While we’re on the topic of scared, I started watching Stranger Things, too. But why? That show is all sorts of scary. I don’t like scary. But neither does Molly, and she’s the one who convinced me to watch it in the first place. What is it about this show that draws us both in? Molly says it’s the redemptive stories, good people working together towards a better good. I like that. But now I’m wondering if it’s something else for me. I think what I like are the characters’ bravery and curiosity. No, wait, I got that backwards. It’s first curiosity and then bravery. They’re faced with something unknown—what’s beyond that tunnel? what do these lights do? who is this girl?—but instead of turning around and running, they look closer. They’re curious. And it’s this curiosity that helps them find bravery. 

I’m not sure what that has to do with procrastination and summer. Except that maybe leading with curiosity instead of a plan isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe when I abandon a checklist for the sake of joy I’m simply being curious. Maybe choosing to be curious about where the day, or the words, might take me is how I’ll learn to be brave to do the harder things. 

Tomorrow I’ll rage pack. I’ll make a billion trips to target and I won’t go to bed early like I said I would. And still it will all get done. 

But today we’ll go to the beach. I’ll spend 20 minutes blowing up an inner tube that will allow them to feel the freedom of floating on water. I’ll say yes when the ice cream truck comes by, so that they can try a new flavor and compare it to last week’s popsicle. Then later that night I’ll finally work through that pile of laundry while we watch the next episode of Stranger Things. I won’t find out if this terrifying story has a happy ending. Not yet. But I will get to watch Mike and Will and Lukas and Eleven and Dustin (total crush on Dustin, just as a side) find their bravery in this episode’s story. It will surely leave me curious about what happens next. It always does. One brave story usually makes us curious enough to write the next.

Maybe it will even leave me brave enough to tackle that packing list tomorrow.