Old photos

If you are old enough to remember life before iPhones than you likely remember the early mobile phones, you know the ones you couldn’t text on, or if you did you had to press the 1 button three times if you wanted a letter C. Every time you got a new phone you had to type in all your contacts from one phone to the next as the only clouds were in the sky. I do remember the first iPhones and how revolutionary they were compared to other phones of the day (the big one was the Motorola Razr – a flip phone). Yeah, the iPhone really did revolutionize mobile phones. One of the things I really liked about the iPhone is that if you keep backups on your laptop, destroying your phone doesn’t destroy all the time and effort you have put into setting it up. I have lost a phone before and because I didn’t have someones number lost touch with them. It happened more than I care to admit and I doubt I’m the only one.

Besides backing up the contacts, it also backs up your apps and pictures. I pretty much adopted the iPhone early on and have kept one ever since. I’ve upgraded a few. Two went for swims. Most get a cracked screen, or as some of the glass backed ones they get cracked backs. But through all of that I’ve kept backups and have been able to restore to a new device when I get it. What this means is my iPhone has quite a few old photos on it. Going back almost a decade. So today when I got a low memory warning on my phone it prompted me to start clearing out all those old podcast and scrolling through my photo album to clean out the duplicates where I took five shots just to keep the best one.

Sometimes it is sad. Like today when I went back just a month or so I saw videos of our sweet little Ladybug when she was still alive. I miss her. Or when I scrolled back a couple years and saw that last video I took of my dad before we took him to the hospital for what turned out to be the last time. These memories, these zeros and ones have so much feeling attached to them. I sometimes wonder in the past before we had all of these devices if moving on was easier. I saw pictures of friends I haven’t seen in years, some because of the COVID lockdown some because life has changed. I saw my family together, all of them. I saw a bunch of BBQ’s, and countless graduation, anniversary, wedding or “just for the fun of it” parties we’ve been blessed to attend thanks to our large family in the Wiregrass Congregation.

One of the things I stopped on was the first convention photo I came to. It was from the 2019 Convention titled “Love Never Fails”! One of the things Donya and I started doing is every year at the convention we would go to the large TV’s during the lunch intermission and take a photo with the convention image in the background. This one here is the last convention we have attended. No, don’t worry, we haven’t gone inactive! The 2020 convention was interrupted by COVID and so it was all online. Thankfully the brothers were able to organize this and prepare videos for the entire three day event incredibly quickly! This year for the 2021 convention we will be doing it online as well.

It’s amazing what is saved on our phones! If you haven’t lately, take a stroll down memory lane and go through your photos. Not just the first ones you come to, but ALL of them. I bet you’ll find some memories you forgot long ago and maybe it will bring a smile to your face. Then again, when you see someone you miss who isn’t here with us today it might make you a bit sad. But don’t worry, you’ll eventually smile. That’s where faith comes in, for Jehovah promises us “he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore.” (Rev 21:4). What a wonderful time that will be, to see our loved ones again. If you haven’t seen it, I would highly recommend the video “The Resurrection – Soon a Reality“.