My profile picture on facebook is currently a beautiful wedding photo taken by Suzanne Gillis and enhanced digitally by our family friend, Mike Benson. What Mike added to the picture was antiquity. He made a photo that was taken a couple of weeks ago look as if it’s a hundred years old. I love that!
Mike challenged me to think about why I always go for the old look. He suggested his hypothesis, and after about two seconds to think about it, I agreed.
It’s not just that the sepia tones appeal to the warmer side of me or that the crease down the middle gives it definition. It’s that the values that I hold dear and that we strived to put in Hannah are borrowed from an earlier time. They are, if you will, traditional values. That’s the meaning of “traditional”: borrowed from an earlier time. Glenn and I were really set in our hearts on putting traditional values deep in our kids. And the earlier time from which we borrowed those values was much, much “earlier.” It was the beginning of time. It was there, in the Garden, where God established marriage and declared a man and his wife to be one flesh, warning later that man should never part what God has joined (Gen.2: 24; Mt. 19:5,6). It was there, in fact, that His ultimate authority in marriage and in all relationships was forever established. Christ himself looked back to that time when he commented on the sanctity of marriage in Matthew 19.
Traditional. I think that’s why I like the sepia and the creases. Somehow, in my psyche, they represent a lifetime of working against a culture to draw our family back to the standards of an earlier time, when marriage was sacred, integrity was expected and there was honor in purity. Thanks, Mike, for making me think about why I love the antique in the photo. I know why you thought of that. It’s because you and Lanore had the same ideals for Bethany and Katie.
