This week I spent an afternoon scouring piles of old family photos. I was in search of any of mom and me for an upcoming story for Guideposts Magazine. I had avoided the task for days. Truth be told, I had avoided the task since Mom died. She was our family photographer, a role I found myself in once I started a family of my own. As I sat cross-legged on the floor in my study, scattered photos all around me, I was struck by a few things that have stayed with me all week.

I don’t have a lot of photos of mom and me. There were a ton of photos of me and my siblings or of dad and us. Many of the photos were of family gatherings where our large Cuban family would get together for a special occasion or a random weekend. Lots of moments captured with aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents. As I studied each photo, I relived childhood snow days. I was transported back to summer vacations on the beach. Random moments on our living room couch stood frozen in time before me. I held a photo, ran my finger along the image. I could practically reach out and touch the seventies wallpaper. I pulled another box of photos out. This one contained photos from more recent years of mom with her grandchildren, my own children. Some even had mom and me holding the kids when they were a lot younger. I was filled with regret for not taking more photos of just the two of us.

Then I realized Mom had given me glimpses of life through her lens with each snapshot that lay before me. My childhood was captured through her eyes from my arrival in this world to my awkward elementary school years. She captured the big moments as well as the little moments. There were photos of me in my Easter dress, my cap and gown, wedding dress. I might not have a lot of photos of mom and me, but I have life through her eyes. With each snapshot, I can picture her behind the camera, smiling and laughing to put us at ease. Some photos clearly show me or my siblings groaning through another pose. We rolled our eyes as mom convinced us to smile for the camera. Looking back, I can now see we got it together and smiled for her, not the camera she held. What a blessing she gave us by documenting our lives in snapshots.

This led me to another thought. Today, we live our lives mostly in digital snapshots. We spend countless hours scrolling from one image to the next as they come up on our feeds. We barely register one image before moving on to the next. It’s almost a mindless activity day in and day out, a reflex when we reach for our phones. Social media is filled with our best photos…only those we are willing to share with the world. What we choose to share is a carefully curated selection of just some of our life moments.

What if someone scrolled through our true moments in time, not what we present to the internet and ultimately the world. What would that look like?

If someone scrolled through our live feed so to speak, what would they see?

Would each of those snapshots be something we are proud of? Would we be ashamed by the behavior that would show up? Would we feel like frauds, having presented only the stuff we’re proud of when behind the scenes we’re truly drowning in poor choices, negative self-talk, and bad hair days?

Just some food for thought. I challenge you to look at your life as though someone was scrolling through your day. Be honest. Do your real time snapshots match the ones you’re posting online?

And, if you’re not one to post photos online try looking at your day through an imaginary lens. If your day was shared in snapshots, would you feel good about the person you were to those around you?