March 21

by David Lins  |  03/21/2021  |  (Being) Catholic Matters

Have you ever known a bitter, hurt, or heartbroken person who cropped someone out of a picture? Have you ever been that person?

Either way—you know what I’m talking about.

After the crop, the remaining picture might just look like an incredibly happy individual. And it was an incredibly happy individual, but now that picture represents what is no longer there.

I have one of those pictures.

It is a picture of me wearing a baseball cap bought from a fishery in Alaska. I look pleased. I look fulfilled. Some might say I even look a bit rugged.

What people don’t realize, is that below the bottom of the cropped picture, I was holding an infant. It was the first time I was a dad. It was also months before the first time I’d come to know catastrophic, personality- changing, PTSD-inducing tragedy.

And isn’t that the way it is?

People see our pretty, perfect lives on the hill. They see the house, the car, the family photo. They do not see the parts of the picture we crop. The expectations, the pressure, the strained relationships, and our mistakes.

We intimately know and understand our own cropped pictures, but we have no idea when it comes to others.

Here is the important part: as Easter approaches and the pretty lives of others look picture perfect, it is crucial we remember every picture we see is cropped.

We aren’t the only ones who are doing our best for the Lord in this broken, messy world. And Jesus didn’t die and rise for those who aren’t broken. What we are about to remember and relive—is for all of us walking around with cropped pictures.

Questions? Comments? Reach David at dlins@oloj.org.