victory flags

My feed these days is filled with fear. Articles released seconds before are already reposted, articles weeks old are still being shared, opinions are voiced loudly, in a way I feel like they are screaming at me. Every human I know is scared. I start shaking after just a few minutes of intaking it all. The words I collect as my thumb scrolls by pierce all the way into my marrow. Some days I shut it all out and I feel a little bit better. But right now, in the middle of all of this, sitting in our home, aching for relationships, I am drawn back.

Because I see the bread. Loaves of golden bread in a neat little row, reminding me of a different era. At first I feel a prick of jealousy. I haven’t showered in days , my children are acting like wild animals. No one will be stopping by, so I leave the dishes in the sink and they spill out onto my counters. There is no bread on my counters.

But that photo reaches into my heart and grips it. This bread is not just something yummy to eat because all the shelves are bare. This isn’t a brag. This is a victory flag in a time of change and unrest. My jealousy melts away and suddenly, this person’s joy becomes mine…becomes ours.

From the lord of the flies situation in my home, I could easily look at the craft makers, the bread bakers, the cheerfully posed picture takers and I could just die a little bit inside with an ache that longs to be more like them. But when I stop comparing and start celebrating, everything takes on a new glow. Not only am I surrounded by beauty but I feel the collective hand grasps across the globe…a whispered “We’ve got this.”

It’s the little squares that show:

A mess of paints and eager hands.

The shadow a daffodil makes in the morning sun.

Love through the smudged window.

A makeshift homeschool space with beauty woven through it.

The music people are sharing, freely, purely.

The poetry being written…and read.

Every tiny part of nature being reborn right now. The buds, the blooms, the green shoots that we are holding our breath to find out what they are.

Hands held.

Trees scaled.

Picnics with grandmother’s china on the floor.

Crafts made out of the recycling bin.

Yoga with a neighbor across the street.

Breathless game nights.

A good book and a worn spot on the couch.

A brisk walk.

Countless meals using the cans from the back of the pantry.

Grocery bags by the front door of someone who needs them.

Laughter.

Togetherness.

Resilience.

Because jobs will still be lost, people will still get sick, mental health will still falter but choosing to see and share joy can be the difference in survival.

So break out the camera. Post away the moments you hold dear. Stitch them together like victory flags.

***I am planning a project with your photos of beauty in this time of turmoil. Please email to Helenjgeorge@gmail.com so I can include them!

What I love about social media

It never fails…I will be out and about, hair unbrushed, clothes that I chose off the floor of my bathroom, and a mind a million miles away, when a Facebook friend comes up to me to say hello. Maybe I know them in real life or maybe I only know them through the tiny screen of my glowing phone. Either way we start talking and I (who am literally not able to be fake) usually ends up opening up my heart and exposing hard things from it. I do it every time. And almost without fail my Facebook friend will say, “Oh! I would never know with how you come across on social media!”

My heart sinks. I get a little bit offended. The last thing on earth I want is for someone to think I have it all together. First of all…don’t I literally and figuratively show my dirty laundry every few months? Secondly, I deliberately try to litter my feed with images and words that fight the idea that my family is perfect. There are photos of my children crying, my dishes, me standing in a pile knee deep of laundry. There are laments of my heart, tuggings of my soul and posts searching for connection. I feel like I leave it all pretty bare.

Then I will go home and sit down to scroll, determined to prove them wrong. I will start by finding all of the proof of the realness. I will start counting them one by one until I get lost…lost in the beauty. As I scroll I see image after image of my life. I will see a photo of my children giggling and know just how hard that season was. I will see me with tired eyes hugging a bunch of wildflowers and remember that hard afternoon when the roadside blossoms made me feel alive. I will see memory after memory after memory. And then I know. These aren’t highlights. These aren’t fake. These are the moments that I grasp for. These are the beauty that I seek each and every day. They happen in the season of loss, they develop in times that we are not our ideal weight, and the beautiful thing about it is that they can happen simultaneously with sadness.

Every day I am bombarded with articles and posts griping about the dangers of social media. I agree with most of them. Yes we spend our precious time looking instead of experiencing. Yes it can make us jealous. Yes it can make us not connect in real life. But even with such a huge pile of why nots, I still can’t throw social media out with the bathwater and here’s why.

Hope.

I would say an average day is hard for me. Whether I am tired from binge watching Netflix, brokenhearted about a school shooting, or weary from serving the hundredth snack of the day, my days are usually not easy. Inside of them, though, I am always searching. Searching for the hope, for the beauty, for the ACTUAL LIGHT. And I always can find it. Whether it is in my child’s twinkly smile or in the beauty of a shadow on the floor, finding it and showing it to the world is life changing. So maybe no one gets the shadow on the floor except you and you are left with 3 likes from your mom and your best friends, it does not matter. That was a moment you claimed for good.

This is why I love social media. I love celebrating in the triumphs. I love that just a quick double tap can say, “I see you.” It’s not a highlight reel to me, it’s a light reel. And as humans I think we need to celebrate all the light that we can.

this strange space | costa rica

Coming down off of a year of intense change and hurt, our family took a trip to Costa Rica for 2 weeks, just us 5.  

We saw monkeys and hiked the base of a volcano.  We swam in the sea surrounded by rugged rocks and twisted tropical trees.  We have 500 pictures of it all, in little rows on our iphones.  

The few times I picked up my camera-sometimes hazy with the humidity-it wasn't to capture the beauty of the country or document us doing something exciting.  It was a breathless attempt to grab onto the quiet magic. 

We ended up renting an open air house in the jungle on the Oso Peninsula, where they don't have electricity and you have to drive through rivers. 

It was there that our family found such tender healing. It goes beyond words.  Hours would pass with no speaking, just the click click of tiny transformers and the breeze in the trees.  I had time to cook and wash dishes while my family played games, filling my heart up to bursting. We spent days covered in mud on the rugged beach, completely free to be ourselves as not a soul walked past.     

At night I lay in Noah's sweaty arms listening to the ocean and the gekkos chirping, in awe of the strangeness of this space.

I saw my children there.  Raw and open, not who I was fashioning them to be, but their exposed souls-terrifying and magestic. 

Here are some of my most treasured photos I've ever taken. 

I wonder if you can see it. 

I wonder if they arouse in you the same heart longing that they have me.