Spending: Day 8

Family pictures are a big stress for me. Family pictures during spending month become an even bigger stress. This all started way back in June…

In June, I found a super cute navy blue dress in Eleni’s size. We just finished painting the living room, it was shades of blue, green, and browns. I knew we wanted to do family pictures with in the next couple of months and was looking for a lovely (large)family picture to hang on the wall, and wanted it to semi-coordinate (at least not completely clash) with the room… seeing as it will be hanging there for at least a year. This dress was perfect… plain, cute, simple navy… I can find a ton of stuff to match with that. So the dress was purchased and I had my mind set everyone was coordinating around this dress.

Well the summer slipped by, things got busy…no pictures. Then surgery and recovery, then the marathon, then convention, then HOLY COW it is late October and well over a year since our last family pictures! So I needed to book pictures. I got a time slot booked with my lovely friend Sarah Kliethermes for November 12^th. I had plenty of time… 3 weeks out. Well, I didn’t really think about it until the day before the spending fast (actually NIGHT before) was to begin. I franticly contacted her to put a check in the mail so she could get paid (she wasn’t on my list of 7) assuming that everyone would have something in green or blue in their correct sizes, I didn’t worry too much about it. I would have assumed wrong.

I spent the 2 weeks before pictures contacting various people trying to get certain items for everyone to wear in coordinating colors. And of course I needed options, so let me tell you… family pictures… it takes a village. I have awesome friends! We borrowed boots from Bree, jacket from Ella, shirt from Kirstin, sweater from Faith… along with other “possible items” from Cynthia and Missy and a whole slue of people with a “I will let you know if I need to come pick it up”.  The boys are wearing hand-me-downs from my sister’s boys… so if you look at family pictures, Eric is actually the only person dressed entirely in his own clothes. I was literally vomiting the night before with anxiety (by the way… weather played a factor and we had to bump up our picture day knocking 2 days off my “track stuff down” time). 

It was half an hour before pictures and I was still trying on options of clothes for my husband to choose the right outfit for me to wear. If it was not spending month, I would have definitely just gone out and bought Addi and I completely new outfits (and Eleni and jacket and boots)… probably spending $100 or so on clothes… for a 1 hour photo shoot. God put me in a position… or maybe I put myself in a position (because of shear procrastination) to let the Holy Spirit do a little work on me… asking people to borrow things is not a comfortable thing for me, I just don’t like doing it. But God gave me the opportunity to reach out and lean on my fellow sisters and ask for a little help. And you know what, it wasn’t the end of the world. 

In Philippians 2:3-4 it says ³ Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, ⁴ not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. I have always considered this verse as directed to me as serving/meeting the needs of others (which I do believe is true). But I struggle with being the person that this verse is referring to… the person who someone else is must “value above themselves”. I personally find it more difficult to be on the receiving end of someone humbling themselves and putting my needs before theirs. I think sometimes the way we please the Lord is by allowing (even if it is very difficult and sometimes very humbling) others to be able to serve too, and by that I mean serve us…me. This is an area that God has really been working on me, throughout the entire fast, but was made abundantly clear with the amount of people I needed to reach out to for one silly hour photo shoot.

So even if it was a trivial (and yes I realize in the grand scheme of things… the clothing is not what really matters in family pictures) God taught me, as He continually does, another great lesson.

I put a few shots from the sneak peaks from our photo session. Our photographer was Sarah Kliethermes Photography (check her out on Facebook!). She did an amazing job with our crazy crew. By the end we had two kids with grass stains, a kid that laid down in dog poop, 4 cold kids, and one exhausted mama… and somehow she worked her magic and they were fantastic! (bribing small children with ice cream also helps :))

Thanks for joining me on the journey!