Worth the Wait

For several months before Christmas, I was working on a special gift for my two brothers. I was scanning all the photographs of our childhood - which were housed in an unbelievably large number of photo albums! I also scanned photos from my mother's old albums, albums of both of my grandmothers and a few other relatives.

This was a herculean task that took me a couple hundred hours! Not only did I need to scan the photos (at high resolution, which took tons of time and a huge amount of hard disk storage space), I needed to do various cropping and file conversion processes. It was an absolutely consuming and complex process.

Keeping everything organized was a challenge all it's own. Taking good care of the pictures and repairing damage to the albums added another element of challenge.

All the while, I had to keep the secret from my brothers. Even when one of my brothers was visiting my home before Christmas, I worked on the project with him in the room with me, unbeknownst to him, so that I might finish on time. I was working on the photo project up through Christmas eve! I barely finished in time.

I've never been good at keeping secrets. I'm a very open person, and especially if something is exciting - I have a hard time keeping it to myself. I knew that my brothers were going to be very excited about the project and each time I saw or spoke to them it was all I could do to keep the secret. I wanted to tell them so badly it hurt!

The difficulty of keeping the secret, however, all faded away on Christmas day when they opened their joint gift. They were, indeed, pleased with the gift, and later that day we enjoyed a long slide show to view the 3,500 pictures I had scanned.

I had digitized our history. We laughed and reminisced and remembered. It was everything I'd hoped for... and well worth the wait!

Patience can indeed be a virtue.

Some things are definitely worth waiting for! Remember that the next time you feel temped to short circuit some process you're involved in.

Patience... Patience... Patience!