A Snap Shot
By Bernadette A. Moyer

It’s that wonderful time of year again when all the trees are changing colors and the air is crisp and clean and you just want to enjoy the outdoors and take it all in before winter weather arrives.

I walked to our corner mailbox to drop a few letters inside and at the mailbox I looked across the street and witnessed one of the most beautiful orange leaves on a big tree that had turned colors. The sun was streaming through it. I wanted to capture the moment and grabbed for my cell phone as I stood there and clicked away at taking a few pictures.

At this same time a lady from our neighborhood walked by with her dog and said, “Oh wow taking a selfie at the mailbox for Happy and Chipper?” I laughed and waved her off as my husband had just appeared to pick me up since we were headed out together for the day.

Then I quickly turned to her and said, “No selfie actually look at that beautiful tree, that tree was what I was taking pictures of …”

Sometimes we see something and we think we know what we are seeing when in fact our snap shot view isn’t correct. We presume to know.

Recently we went on a trip out of town when my son sent me a picture of the house and front yard. I thought he was showing me that he cut the grass. My response was “good.” Little did he know that I missed the message, or did I know at the time he was showing me that the contractor we hired had come by and installed new hand rails.

I totally missed it. What my son was sharing was not at all the snap shot that I had in my mind. Sometimes we totally miss the picture and in doing so miss the message.
We are often so quick to glean our own conclusions that we totally miss what is actually happening. We think we see something that we totally missed and in our snap shot view we may get it wrong.

One of my favorite phrases is “suspend judgement” wait until we have the total picture before coming to any conclusions. What we think we see in a “snap shot” moment just may not be the complete and total picture, and it may not capture the entire story …

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