Just before the end of school, Ashlynn broke her glasses; it was the day before a field trip to the Old School House having something to do with Laura Ingles Wilder. And she was reading one of the books of Little House on The Prairie, so she was super excited to be going to see this school house. When I called to see if she could be squeezed in to see the eye doctor, the appointment they made up (literally stuck us into the schedule on top of someone else) was for that next day, during the field trip. The horror!!! Do I decide she's not going on the trip or do I decide the glasses could wait, or more so her eyes could wait to get new glasses, for a good three-week wait? We prayed about it and were convinced she'd be fine without them for a few weeks.
As the weeks went on, she was asked by every new face two questions every time: 1) what happened to your glasses?! 2) can you see or is everything fuzzy? how many fingers am I holding up?
She would always say she didn't know what happened to her glasses or how they broke (curious?) and she would always say she could see fine and it wasn't bothering her to not have them. So she went from wearing them all the time to wearing them never and was fine. Not once did she complain about not being able to see.
(Back history: she found out she needed glasses in Kindergarten after the school screening and having to go through it twice. :) So she's had them on her face for over 1.5 years.)
So we finally had our appointment and today was the bid day to pick up the new glasses, which I have to admit, are super cute. Especially since with our insurance, we usually get a selection of about 5 frames, none of which could be classified on their best day as super cute! And she is not wearing them all the time, just to read or watch TV or maybe for something else, but not all the time and not when she's playing. So there you have it - -
Me, on the other hand, I've been wearing corrective lenses for 21 years! yikes! Mostly contacts, though my current set of contacts is over two years old. Kind of a Guinness Book of World Records I might be attempting to set - how long can you make a one-year supply of disposable contacts last? They're getting down there, got some deposits on them that refuse to come off anymore, so I wear them for specific things only: working out (thought now at home I just go blind, no contacts, no glasses; but at our gym I wear the contacts) or if I want to wear my shades outside and still be able to see or go swimming. These are the only reasons I will attempt to wear them. Trying to preserve them for as long as I can. Why? Because when you have limited funds and limited insurance, contact fittings as you know cost $$ I don't have and so I make do. It is what it is and until one tears (that would be devastating!) I'll deal with the discomfort.
So today I was mowing the lawn and wanted to wear shades but not contacts and I thought, if Ashlynn can go without seeing perfectly I should be able to handle it. Yeh, I need to follow lines pretty carefully but I'm not that blind! So I cut the grass today with no corrective lenses. This meant I had to focus on my line closer to the mower rather than looking ahead, down the line, a little farther into the distance.
And this is when my blog post started.
We, our family, has been very focused for the last year or more on living 'in the now' where Jesus is. Not in the past, not in the future, not tomorrow or next week, but now, which quickly turns into the past, mind you, by the second. :) Don't worry about where the money for our monthly bills will come from for the entire month, but do what we can with our provisions for today to take care of what we need to TODAY. Make plans for the future, tomorrow, next week, next month, but hold them LOOSELY, because we really don't know what God's will is for the future and can only live out what his will is for RIGHT NOW, IN THIS MOMENT.
It's like not being able to see 20/20 perfectly. For me, I'm nearsighted, so seeing in the distance becomes blurry. So I can choose to squint to get the best sight of what's in the distance as I can, or I can choose to aim my focus to what's right in front of me and take it in in smaller chunks. Looking off to the distance means digesting the scene in larger chunks, possibly missing the finer details because the picture is so large. Taking my focus off the blurry distance and the need to squint until I can't squint anymore, and placing my focus right in front of me means taking in smaller scenes at a time, constantly reassessing the scene according to the new pixels I've just moved into focus. Much smaller scenes, much smaller set of details to observe/digest and much more refocusing/readjusting with the constant changing of images/information. At first it felt a bit tedious mowing that way, as I had to keep stopping and looking up to check my lines, to make sure I wasn't leaving 'mowerhawks' in our lawn (I like that, I think I just coined a new word ;)) but it was refresher after the first fives minutes or so, as I let it soak in that what I was really doing mentally was refocusing my eyes and my mind to now and I was not focused on the end of my row - or to translate - trying to control the uncertainty of what's in the future.
And, this also something we are strongly focused on as a family and what we share with our gym family, when we focus on now - what we need to accomplish in this moment, with what we've been given - that hands God the control (which he has anyway through his Sovereignty but he still waits for us to hand it over to him). Control of our lives, control of the situation, control of the finances. Instead of us always trying to fix/solve/figure out the future, we're living by the moment, for the moment which allows us to live in God's will for us and live out his plan instead of ours.
Maybe we aren't meant to see 20/20?
I believe something I've always heard, I'm sure you've heard it too - God's got the bigger picture, we only are a very small part of that picture. Reminds me of a manual camera. Those who aspire to be photographers (as I once attempted to be by self-teaching), like really good manual camera handlers, usually aspire to manipulate the focus to make the picture more interesting. Usually, the focus is on the important/eye-catching 'thing' and the rest is a blur or out of focus in the background. Right? Those auto shoot and point cameras put everything into perfect focus - almost a false reality if you think about it.
Sounds a lot like God's plan for us. His plan is the big background blur and we are the little in-focus spec. We can't see his plan because it's not meant to be seen by us. We aren't meant to have God-vision, A.K.A 20/20 vision, auto-focus on everything. We were created to live in the now, with Jesus who is in the now - the present. And our now moves us along in his ever-present big picture plan.
Maybe try it out. Take off the specs, take out the contacts and try living a day with your focus on what you can see without them. Maybe, quite possibly, it is what God had meant for you to see all along.
It's the human tradition that comes in and demands 20/20. Is it a sin to leave a mowerhawk?! I haven't come across that one yet in the bible!
All praise be to God for this post.
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