These images are © 2015 by Life As She Does It. Please link back or credit if any content or images are used. — These images are © 2015 by Life As She Does It. Please link back or credit if any content or images are used.

Have you ever looked back on a picture and thought to yourself, “WHAT WAS I THINKING??” I do it ALL the time, unfortunately.

There are some I cringe to look at because I was so young and now I’m so not.

Ahhh, the days of innocence when the thought of the chemical lighter fluid behind me didn't make me think of eating a carcinogen marshmallow.

There are some that I abhor because I was fat.

Woo! And I actually got fatter than THAT!

There are some I look at and am embarrassed because I thought I was all that.

Well, I WAS all that in this picture, but I’m standing in a Dollar Store posing like that, soooo not really.

There are some I look at and think, “What was I wearing??”

What?? That cotton puffpaint-suit had matching earrings!

There are some that confuse me because I just don’t know WHAT I was trying to do.

Uhhh…YEA.

There are some pictures that make me just miss my old eyebrows.

Brook Shields had NOTHIN’ on me, apparently.

There are some where I realize, the higher and bigger the hair, the higher and bigger the fool.

I wonder where I was all dressed up to go in my Z Cavaricci pants with the towel so elegantly draped over the window behind me?

There are some that even friends warn you not to show.

(From Facebook): Hugh Durlam: "WOW. Some pictures are meant to be burned. I'm not sure what the biggest offender in this pic is; The hair, the wine in the jelly jar, or the wood paneling."

‘Nuff said.

Some I just wish for that smooth, collagen-plump baby face back.

But not the dress. OR the hair.

Some I’m not even sure are ME.

Dang it. It’s me.

And then there are those pictures that are worth a thousand words.

Or no words at all. (That one is so bad, that I cropped the other person out of the photo to help them avoid the embarrassment of standing there with me! You're welcome.)

Yep. I think we all have a collage of pictures we’re not sure we’d ever have the courage to show. But I don’t regret one of them. Nope, not even the puffpaint-suit one. Each and every one of them contains a memory that has evolved me into the person I am today, and given me the life I now cherish and know is short-lived.

I wish I had a picture for every single moment: the good AND the bad. It would give me a chance to reflect on what was sweet and savory, and what mistakes helped me learn and gave me wisdom. I don’t have pictures of the hours I labored to give birth to Cameron and my bff, Sina, wouldn't let me push too early so that he would come into this world with a beautiful and perfectly round head. I don’t have a photo for the moment I received a call that a good friend died. I don’t have a photo for the first time Chelsea said, “I love you, Mommy.” There is no photo I have to represent the very instant I accepted Christ as my Savior and my whole life changed. I don’t have a photo for the first time I saw Jordan cry and it made my chest feel pinched. I don’t have a photo to represent the heartaches of broken relationships. I don’t have a photo of the butterflies in my stomach when I met Adrian and knew he was The One. But though I don’t have a photo for those things, I have a picture of them. They’re all in my memory, and they’re all perfect. So go on and shake your head in revulsion over that photo of you dressed in satin shorts and tube socks with the world’s worst hair cut – but make sure you keep the picture of that memory in the perfect album: Your Heart.

Picture Perfect Memories

Sheila Garcia