Unfortunately, you can’t take a picture of how something tastes.

The empty plate above is from one of the two pies I baked last night. I had a great time making Apple Pie and Chocolate Cream Pie with Orange Meringue.

The Apple Pie was a standard two-crust pie with a sweet little heart cut in the top crust. Cinnamon and sugar did their work, and the pie got gobbled up at work today. So did the chocolate pie. Yum. Again, I say, “YUM.”

Let me tell you a little about that Chocolate Cream Pie with Orange Meringue. The Orange Meringue part happened last-minute. Right before it was time to put the meringue on top of the chocolate filling, I decided to add some orange zest. I gotta say, it was one of the best last-minute decisions in my brief pie-making history.

Sometimes, when you follow your heart, it turns out AWESOME.

The chocolate combined with that creamy orange meringue–there just aren’t words. And the only picture that could come close to describing it was that empty pie plate. The only people who can ever know the taste of it are the ones who got a forkful (or two, or seven…).

I love to take pictures. A photograph can go a long way when it comes to telling a story. But I’m reminded by that pie that sometimes, you can’t photograph something.

There’s so much in our lives that’s just meant for only our hearts to capture.

Tonight, I took part in a beautiful experience at our local high school. Some friends of our family lost their daughter to cancer last year, and they had a wonderful memorial celebration tonight where folks lit lanterns outside. Donations raised money for a scholarship fund for students who “Light the Way” in their school and community. The young woman honored by this scholarship did just that.
I did take a few pictures at the event. But as it turns out, it was really just impossible to capture the feeling–the beauty–of what was happening. Hundreds of colorful lanterns lit up the night sky. Smiling faces–many with joyful tears– shone in the glow of those lanterns. Young and old celebrated together the life of someone wonderful, and the lives of all of those who pushed their lights to the sky.

It was a night to love life.

As my daughter and her friends, like so many others, tried to capture the event with photographs I said to them, “You can try, but really, you’ll just have to remember it in your heart.”

And they will. And I will. We all will.