Have you ever pored over someone else’s photos, scrapbooking pages, or Facebook shots and had a pang of: ‘Man, they have a really awesome life!’? You see the smiling faces of them and their friends, their children or their partner… the status updates listing the amazing things they got up to on the weekend… and just think ‘Wow’.
And maybe if you’re having a really bad day it kind of clangs and crashes against your perception of your own reality. To the point where you might be left feeling: ‘Why me? When God was handing out perfect, happy, smooth-running lives, where was I?!’
Perhaps it might help to rationalise that it’s all a facade. That really, these one-dimensional images are just that. They don’t tell the full story of a person’s life.
I mean, take for example this glowing shot from an old favourite TV series, 90210…
Hardly says everything, does it, huh Brenda? 🙂
Think about your own ‘happy snaps’ from the past. Perhaps you and your friends were laughing in one of the pictures taken on your last day of high school. But behind the smiles and the jokes, you were battling a debilitating depression that would stay with you as you navigated university life and beyond…
Or maybe there’s a shot of your husband bouncing on the trampoline with your two-year-old son as you look on. A perfect image of family fun and connection. But inside, your hearts are breaking as you come to terms with the loss of your other little one, who died at 28 weeks.
Photos are simply snapshots in time – moments which tell so little of our collective stories. Moments which betray what we’re really feeling, or dealing with. Facebook, for example, provides the perfect opportunity to publicise impressions of ourselves which really don’t explain a lot.
Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s a wonderful and relevant platform for communicating and sharing our lives, as well as inspirational thoughts and meaningful dialogue with friends and acquantances. But when it becomes a substitute for real-life vulnerability and relationship, it’s just another way to cover up our true selves.
New life, marriage, memories of fun with friends, invigorating moments… yes, all beautiful stuff that’s worth shouting from the rooftops. But if that’s all we’re doing… if this simplistic image creation is where we invest most of our time… then where do we get the chance to share what’s really going on for us… or ask the deeper questions of what’s happening in someone else’s life, face to face…
Because without regular human connection, we can find ourselves adrift, alone – with the thought that no one truly knows the real us…
Who will you tell some of your story to this week? Who will I? Because we all shed tears sometimes. And we all just want to be loved. Not for how we look in a photo or what we cooked for dinner – but who we are deep inside. And yes, that might be communicated somewhat in a status update, or a blog post, or a song shared via YouTube – but really reaching out, and allowing others in – has to be more than just that. Because nothing beats a hug, or a heated face-to-face debate – or a shared dessert, as the tears roll down your face about how shocking – or wonderful – your week has been… Lord, may I crave more of that kind of stuff.
It's a God thing... 
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