The Hope and Truth Behind a Pretty Picture

Hello Beauties! How are your brave hearts today? Honest: my heart was feeling less than brave this morning. Old fears were trying to steal my brave. I seem to be more susceptible to that on gray days, but I made a quick call to a friend and had a long sit-down with Jesus to be reminded of the truth. There’s no shame in forgetting what’s truest about you, Bravehearted Beauties. Just make sure you fight for ways to be reminded of who you really are. Maybe that’s what you’re doing when you come here. If so, I’m honored to be a truth speaker for you!

Okay, so here’s why I’m here today. I’ve been wanting to share the backstory of what otherwise appears to be just another pretty picture. Because in the backstory, there is HOPE for you in your hard.

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I think we do our stories, our God, and each other a disservice when we post a bunch of pretty pictures without revealing any of the backstory. There’s always a backstory. Does that mean you need to expose all things to all people all the time? Absolutely not. Some people aren’t safe for your heart and your whole truth. And sometimes it’s not the right time. But I think you’d be surprised by how much your truth is needed. If we knew more of the backstories behind the beauty, I think we’d all feel more hopeful in the midst of our own hard.

So here’s the backstory behind the photo that became our Christmas card….

The truth is, I didn’t want to send a Christmas card because JD and I were hanging by a thread. I didn’t want to fake a happy family when it felt like we were fragile. But there’s another truth, too. And that truth is, not one thing about this photo is fake. This is the beauty of my family right in the midst of our most broken place.

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It was a Monday afternoon in December when the girls asked about our Christmas card. They’ve grown up knowing this is what I do. But I told them I wasn’t feeling it this year. That I didn’t have a photo or a word. That it was too late to pull anything off in time for Christmas. I tried to sound hopeful about a “He’s making all things new” card in January, or a “how He loves us” Valentine in February.

But the girls would have none of that. With only 30 minutes of daylight left before the winter sun dropped behind the hills, they changed clothes, straightened their hair and put on some lipgloss. They’re easy for me to photograph, so surely I could pull off a photoshoot in record time if they were this quick and cooperative.

But that wasn’t enough. They wanted the whole family on the card. And not in separate photos as I had done before, but all of us in one photo. What?!?! Did they have any idea what they were asking? Of all times to insist on the whole family, this felt like the worst.

JD was in the middle of a nap, I wasn’t dressed for a photo, and the sun was going down fast. But that’s not the worst of it. The truth is, we were only a few weeks removed from the most painful week of our entire marriage. A combustible combination of reactions rooted in our childhood stories culminated in a week-long separation and crisis counseling. {I don’t want to dishonor or frighten our families. We love them deeply. But we also love the healing and freedom that truth brings. The truth is that childhood trauma isn’t something that happens to all those other people. It happens to people just like you. It happens because we live in a fallen world. And the truth is, unhealed trauma impacts your brain and wrecks longterm havoc…leaving you entirely confused about what’s happening later in life. Please don’t try to hide it or hope that it will go away on its own. It doesn’t. But here’s the hope: the effects of trauma are healable! Your brain is healable! And your relationships are healable! I shared a few resources for healing at the end of this recent post. I highly recommend The Body Keeps the Score for trauma survivors and their families.}

In the midst of all that mess, the last thing we wanted to do was smile together on a Christmas card.

But something about the hope I heard in my girls’ voices felt like God saying, “Trust me. I see things you don’t yet see.” So I brushed my hair, put on some lipgloss, pulled the tripod out of the closet and quickly relearned the frustrating self-timer feature on my camera. All before the sun disappeared.

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And the crazy thing is that we laughed. We smiled. We gathered in close and put our arms around each other. For real. Somewhere deep inside was something stronger than what our marriage felt like in that moment. Something more true than what we could see in the midst of our mess.

As I sat down to design our card the next day, I did what I’ve done for the last 12 years with every card I’ve ever designed: I stared at the photo and asked God for a word. And I heard it as clear as day in my spirit: HOPE. So I typed those four letters right onto the photo and agreed with God. I agreed to hope in what I could not see…to hope in what God sees.

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Hope doesn’t give you all that you desire in one fell swoop. It doesn’t drive out all the darkness and airlift you out of your hard places in an instant. But at the rock bottom of your hard, hope gives you a push toward the light. And on the way up, while things are still messy and muddled, hope is the voice that dares you to believe in the beauty that is coming.

Rock bottom isn’t fun. But there’s this beautifully broken surrender that happens in that place. You stop running and resisting. You stop trying to manage your story and figure things out. You stop hiding your mess, ignoring your pain and denying your desperate need for a Savior. It’s dark at the bottom of a pit. But just when it seems like the lights are out, hope flickers and dares you to believe beauty will rise out of this broken place. 

And it will.

Only a few weeks after Christmas, I had another chance to express the hope that God spoke over our marriage. It was our 18th anniversary. We were on our way to dinner, and I was just so crazy proud of us. I wanted to honor the beauty and the broken, so I wrote this:

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Yes, I shared a cute picture. {It’s the only one we have from the last year. Taken in a picturesque Italian village on a trip where we were both broken and beautiful.} I’m all for pretty pictures. But I also shared some truth. Not the whole truth, but enough to let people know there’s more to the story that what you see. And in sharing that backstory, people find out they aren’t alone. And that, my friends, is what we all need to know. We aren’t alone in our hard.

Today, as I look back on that Christmas card photo, I remember the brokenness. But I also see the beauty. And I’m so proud of both. In the end, your brokenness becomes your beauty. In the end, you will shine like the stars. In the end, hope will not shame or disappoint you. {Romans 5:5-8}

Here’s to HOPE in the midst of your hard.