All the Moments Matter

When we were kids, my dad would pull out the slide projector to show us old pictures. (If you are under the age of forty, you can use your favorite search engine to look up “slide projector” to understand what I’m talking about!) We thought it was so cool when he placed the little picture slides so carefully in the round tray and then set them on the machine. We’d all sit around together as he went through the snapshots. All the moments from the past, clicking through the story of our family.

Many times over the past couple of years, I feel like I’ve been in one of those old slide projector trays. I haven’t lived days as much as I’ve lived moments—the kind of moments that are seared onto my heart and have brought a change of perspective to my life. Moments of joy, laughter, family, pain, beauty, surprises, grief, reflections, goodbyes—and the list goes on. We don’t always value what happens in the little moments. Yet, moments are a key part of living. When we don’t embrace them, they slip away. When we don’t appreciate them, they pass us by. When we fail to recognize what happens in the small, we get lost in the big.

I’ve always loved moments. And I’ve always been afraid to lose them. When we became aware that my mom had Alzheimer’s, I made the decision early in the caregiver journey that I would grab onto all the moments that I could. And now that she’s gone, I’m so thankful that I have my own slide show to go back to. I click through all the pictures in my mind that I collected with her. Those moments changed quickly on our journey, so I tried to capture them when possible. And I learned that sometimes when it’s too hard to fully comprehend or navigate the big mountains of life, the moments bring it back to what matters.

The book of James talks to us about our tomorrows. Chapter 4 is about submitting ourselves to God, and verse 14 specifically addresses our future and how we shouldn’t boast about things to come, saying, “You do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” The reality is that we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. So, we live the moments of our days with purpose. The pursuit of big and grand can’t compare to authentic life lived in small moments. None of the things that I thought were important that I had to go after compared to the precious moments I captured with my mom, even if she didn’t know they were happening.

So, start growing your snapshot reel. Pictures of life and love, portraits of joy and even of pain—that’s all part of living. The moments that we capture in our hearts affect the choices we make as we go forward. Never underestimate the small, simple acts of love that you can give and receive as you walk through all four seasons, and allow yourself to write the joy stories of love in hard seasons.