If I’ve learned anything watching my parents’ marriage growing up, it’s that love takes on many different forms. 1 Corinthians 13:4 tells us that love is patient, kind, it doesn’t envy, boast, rejoice at wrongdoing; it’s not rude, arrogant, irritable or resentful, it doesn’t insist on its own way. “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”

Love never ends. Never ever. Not when things are difficult, not when the person you love is making it really hard to FEEL lovely toward them, not when they hurt your feelings. Love never ends. Never.

But sometimes, things ARE difficult- sometimes you’ll find yourself going through an especially rough patch, or feel like you’re stranded out at sea with no idea how you got there. Sometimes love hurts. And in those moments of sadness or loneliness or hurt, I believe that photographs have the unique power to heal.

I believe that when you find yourself angry with or upset by your husband or wife, that taking a moment to pull out your favorite image from your wedding day can remind you WHY you fell in love in the first place, can help you remember how you felt the day your pledged your lives to one another, and can remind you that even though things may be difficult at the moment, that your love is worth it. That your marriage deserves to be championed and fought for.

I believe that a photograph can bring comfort during long deployments, when the absence of your other half hurts so badly you think it might literally break you in two.

I believe that, in the unimaginable event of losing a loved one, a photograph can bring about a smile, a warm memory, and the knowledge that the ones we love never truly leave us.

I believe that photographs can help to heal a broken heart, can show a person their own beauty in an irrefutable and irreplaceable way.

I believe that God uses photographs to redeem and renew us, to remind us of our promises we made to love and cherish, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, from that first day of marriage, for as long as we both shall live.

I believe that photographs can heal, redeem, and affirm us all. THIS is why I do what I do.

This photograph is my favorite in the entire world. It’s of my parents on their wedding day. Things in my family have been really hard at times over the years and watching my parents’ relationship endure everything that it has has taught me that if they can make it through the not-so-pretty/downright painful periods, anything is possible.

Happy Wednesday, friends.