Profiles

A couple of people noticed that I changed my profile picture on Facebook and this blog last week. Son in Law John, who notices everything, took a couple of days to comment on it, and wanted to know what prompted it. I hadn’t really thought about it much, but I changed it partially because I was sick of seeing a picture of me made fifteen years ago in a house I don’t live in anymore.

The old picture was one of the few pictures of me that I ever kind of liked. It was made when I had to have one for a brochure when I worked at the church, and I've used it a few times. When I was getting my affairs in order before a kind of scary surgery, I decided it would be my obit picture, and have had it in a convenient folder on my desktop ever since.


Well, I didn’t die, so we haven’t needed the picture. I haven’t liked the way I look all that much lately, and most of my pictures in recent years are made at birthday events, surrounded by grandchildren, so I just hadn’t gotten around to a newer profile picture of me as I really am, one that people who actually know me would recognize.

Another sidelight to this has been my recent reconnection with old friends on Facebook, and I kind of worried that if I ever again meet one of them in person, which I hope to do at my 50th high school reunion, they would think I had misrepresented myself….something I would be loathe to do. So I had Walker take a bunch of snaps of me as I am now with several more pounds and lots more lumps and bags and wrinkles and strange brown spots on me, sparser eyebrows, and perhaps a less full smile, but as I am. (Except I chose a version without my glasses that made a wacky glare.) I picked the shot I disliked least and put it out there for anyone and everyone to see without any embellishments.


If I ever lose that twenty pounds, I plan to have a really good one made, but for now, what you see is what you get.

Tomorrow, I have to give a personal profile of myself at my Education for Ministry class. It’s a combination personal history and faith journey. I’ve been working on it for a while, trying to condense my sixty-six years into twenty minutes of things I’m okay sharing with people I don’t know very well. I guess I’ll present myself pretty much as I am…warts and all…and hope they care for me anyway. They seem like good folks, so I think they will. If they want more than a profile, though, they'll have to slog through two years of this blog.


Blessings,
Janie