We keep this love in a photograph …

Time's forever frozen still…

Where our eyes are never closing…

It is the only thing that makes us feel alive …

I want you to do something for a moment. Imagine someone you love more than anything in the world. More than yourself. More than life itself. Now imagine looking into their eyes. Look so deeply that you can see everything. You can see the past – all your treasured memories together. You see the future – every dream, everything you have talked about and hoped for. Do you feel it?

That’s love.

Now I want you to do something else. Either imagine or actually open up a photo of you and this person you adore so deeply. I want you look at it and imagine that moment. What was the weather? Was there a cool breeze lifting your hair and whirling it around or was it still? How did you feel? Were you laughing together, or were you just quiet together? Who took the photo? What were you doing that day? Now, do you feel some emotions welling up? Maybe happiness for the memories the photograph triggers, or perhaps sadness because you want to go back.

That’s love.

Photos can capture this thing we can only feel and try to understand. Arguably, it is the most beautiful and treasured thing we can have in this world. Someone once said,

“Why do we close our eyes when we pray, cry, kiss, dream? Because the most beautiful things in life are not meant to be seen but only felt by the heart.”

We cannot see love, yet we know it. As Ed Sheeran’s ballad says, photographs can capture it in an amazing way. The lens shutters - time is forever frozen. We have a moment, forever paused in time, everything was perfect. We were not hurting. We were not alone. We were in love. We were alive.

It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it? To see these moments – to be able to look back even when life seems to keep chugging along, sometimes much faster than we prefer. There are times in life where we must leave the people we love; put miles between ourselves and them. At that point, photographs become all we have.

We hold them close to our hearts. We put them in our wallets, around our neck, in our pocket, on our desk - somewhere we can see them each and every day in the hope of getting that feeling again – that feeling of pure and true love. We put them in a photograph, we put them in our hearts until we come home.

This is the hard part. Love is hard. Waiting for love to come home - it's not easy. But sometimes it is our only option. So, hold on and wait. Keep the photograph near your heart. Believe it or not, that little slip of paper is the most valuable thing you own.

I swear it will get easier…

Remember that with every piece of you…

It's the only thing we take with us when we die…