- Not The Only One!
- Post# 159
- 31 Oct. 24
- ” Eyes To See”
- Howdy!,
- Happy Halloween and, welcome to another edition of let’s see what kind of trouble can I get into ☺️☺️. Long before pop music became vulgar and offensive, there were some incredible songs written about eyes. Just way to many to mention, so I’m not going there.🙂 Have you ever noticed that a lot of times, people with some of the most beautiful and striking eyes are hidden behind glasses? I’m not suggesting that there is a connection between poor eye sight and pretty eyes☺️☺️. Our vision is one of our five senses and I guess what I want to ask is do we treasure and trust our eyes? One of my best friends is a retired police officer and he talks about how hard it can be for a witness to actually recount what they saw or believe that they saw.
- There are things that will trick our eyes. Most of us are familiar with illusions such as from a magician. We think that we saw one thing, while we actually experienced something all together different. There are times when our eyes are tired, and they don’t exactly catch the entire picture. There is a cute meme online where there is a cute little cage and inside of the cage is a heart and standing outside of the cage is a brain holding the keys and a sign saying, ” it’s for your own good”☺️☺️. Of course the implication is that our hearts will lead us and take us to places that could lead us to possible heart break. If that is true, could our brains lead us and make us callous and hard and absolutely miss something that can only be fully experienced by being lead by our hearts? . I can’t imagine experiencing and meeting the birth of my child for the very first time with a cerebral only response.☺️ How and in what context can that be the case when that tiny hand grips one of your fingers for the very first time,? The first time that they spit up on you and you think that it’s the best smelling thing ever , or when they give you that really cute and crooked smile from the corner of their mouth and you know that smile isn’t for you, but it’s the byproduct of the gas they are passing ☺️☺️. Under which instance can that be a total brain encounter? I’m not telling you that they won’t break your heart somewhere down the road, because with kids, it’s a distinct possibility ☺️☺️.
- Our eyes are also very instrumental in helping us to see the things that we want to see and believe. It’s story time ☺️☺️. Almost some fifteen years ago I met this couple, who were fairly newly married, even though they were older and both had been married before. They had attended the same high school many years earlier. He was a senior, while she was a freshman. She knew about him as he was pretty popular in school because he was the front man for his very own band. They never had any direct contact with one another , just passings in the hall way. However some thirty-five years later, they ran into one another at a social gathering. They both had moved on with their lives and married other people. They knew a lot of the same people as they were both from a sleepy little waterfront community that resembled a Norman Rockwell painting . Life has a way at times of bringing people across our paths at certain times, which make us wonder why?
- We are going to call him Rob and her Helen, yes names are fictitious ☺️☺️. Rob had lost his wife , a years earlier to a very agonizing battle with breast cancer. It was long , hard and drug out and he was with her every step of the process, as he should have been. Shortly after he met and ran into Helen at a social gathering, they began to date and she was all to aware of what he had been through with his late wife. It’s a little known fact that people who have lost a spouse, normally take one of two paths, and they are, I’ve already had the love of my life, and I’m just good! ☺️☺️. The other path is to jump back in and often they don’t take a huge amount of time to make that decision, because they usually know what they are looking for and is probably a place where they had a high level of success in the past. Some think it’s odd to move on so quickly, some think it’s irresponsible and reckless, but again they usually have a higher degree of success than someone who is just divorced.
- Well , Helen was divorced with a couple of adult children just like Rob . They kind of had a world wind romance and it was crammed into a relatively short period of time, like six months ☺️☺️. Six months were great, month seven, brought with it , a lump on Helen’s breast. The biopsy was confirmed and she was headed for a mastectomy. It was devastating news , just as she thought that she was getting a second lease on life. This is where our eyes sees one thing and our brain is running far away with those keys that has your heart locked in a cage☺️☺️. Rob’s almost immediate response without hesitation was that they should get married so that he could take care of her. Some say foolish and others say selfless and I come down on that side of the argument. While Rob in all of sincerity wanted to move full steam a head, Helen was having none of that ☺️☺️. She just couldn’t imagine asking him to walk down another painful road with no guarantees. She put it out of her head and the more that he asked, the harder the no’s got to be.
- Is there familiarity when it comes to pain and hardship?….absolutely. Helen had an older sister who had succumb to breast cancer a number of years prior, but this time it was her journey and the one person who understood what she was about to go through better than anyone else in her circle, was Rob. I don’t know if it was the reality of what laid before her or the constant and persistent pursuit of Rob, but she eventually relented and they got engaged over the Christmas holiday and had a small ceremony at the justice of the peace the following month. They walked the hard road together and when she looked as if she was on deaths door from the chemotherapy, Rob was there telling her how beautiful she was. As pail as a ghost, all of her hair gone, and all Rob saw was beauty and her loving heart. All Helen could see was how it wasn’t fair towards Rob and what a difficult choice it was to make. Yes, there were times when they didn’t know what the outcome would be, but Rob’s vision was sternly set on the other side of things. He envisioned her healthy again and them doing life together and that is exactly what took place.
- We sometimes want to say no for other people as if they don’t know what they are getting themselves into especially when the stakes are high as it was in this case. If Helen had kept on the “no path” , she may have very well robbed Rob of one of the biggest blessings in his life. We think that we are being noble, but we are often missing out on something uniquely special. We have to give people permission to interact with us in our world, but we can’t automatically think that we have all of the answers or know what’s best for all parties. I’m sure that Rob and Helen had many such discussions, but she could only see what she wanted to see, so was it her eyes, heart or brain that was failing her☺️☺️? I realized that they had a positive out come, she beat cancer and got past that five year mark to be considered cancer free. She is flourishing and so is their relationship. Rob chose to lean in hard and to love, when many thought him crazy. The comparison is a run down slum to a waterfront property with breathtaking views, that’s the other side of their relationship ☺️
- I know that everyone doesn’t always have a positive out come and there are absolutely no guarantees in life except for our close friends death and taxes☺️☺️. The thing is , just what would or could the situation have looked like if they never tried together to make it work?. Those hard times can become immovable rocks in the foundation of a relationship, just steady and true . I think that we sometimes take the worse parts of our lives, such as fear and shame and we dress it up under the disguise of nobility or nobleness. We are taking the high ground by saying no for someone else to keep them from sharing in our vulnerabilities. It’s a badge of honor that keeps us trapped in places that we desperately want to escape and just aren’t sure that we know how. Maybe it’s not so much In the knowing how as it is in the wanting to. ☺️We pray and supposedly leave things at the foot of the cross and almost immediately after we say thank You God and Amen, we immediately pack it back up in our nap sack and haul it around as if it’s some kind of * Siamese twin☺️☺️
- Helen’s thought process isn’t new, it’s not creative, and some might say not even that thoughtful when you think about it. She was going to play the part of the martyr and leave Rob frustratingly not being able to care for her as he watched her diminish just a little bit more each day. It’s not new or creative but, it’s something that’s repeated thousands of times each and everyday. Someone wants to come along side and walk through and with you in life and the martyr card comes out and it’s just full of all of the latest discouragements . It’s starts out about how it’s not fair, well if you get past the age of ten and haven’t figured out yet that life isn’t fair, well you are just from another planet☺️☺️. It’s I’m to old , to young, to much debt, to this ,to that ,to busy because I work all of the time, yeah! It’s a demanding work schedule. I’m sandwiched in between my elderly parents and my adult children…..boo hoo…join the club ☺️☺️. I have to much baggage, don’t you think that they all ready know that if they are a logical human being?. We all have baggage and we are all broken In some way, some more than others, but absolutely no one gets a pass☺️☺️. We have issues with our ex’s and probably our kids to, if we are being honest. Health problems, yeah, they come with the aging process, that I’m not extremely fond of ☺️☺️. What ever happened to two heads being better than one?
- Our vision can be extremely short sighted if we can’t just stop and remember to take a deep breath and breath and push back away from the table to get a more birds eye view of the situation. Life is just a series of seasons, and much like the weather, it will change at some point. I want you to take my word for it and understand that being a martyr leads to burn out and a lack of contentment as we never know how to exit the hamster wheel ☺️☺️
- Let’s just take it up a notch or two☺️. This pattern isn’t new and it’s not just present in the majority of our personal relationships,; but if we aren’t careful it will manifest it’s self in our walk with God as well. When we take what we think is the moral high ground , it can make us legalistic, which is self reliance, which leads to self righteousness. I think about the verse that says , how can you love God, whom you can’t see, if you can’t love people whom you can see.! What’s the connection you say? Well how can you trust God, if one of the main ways that He works is through other people. Sure, sure! , He could just perform a miracle, but He primarily works through other people whom He has placed in your path and are in relationship with both you and Himself.
- Well!!, I just think that is nonsense! Oh! Really!, just see if any of this sounds familiar or has crossed your mind at some point and probably not so long ago☺️☺️. Do you ever struggle to believe that God loves you deeply as He does? This is usually because we look at ourselves first , instead of Him. We often gage God’s love based off of our own actions, performance and disposition. When we do well, then God must love us more and when we do poorly, God must love us less. We seem to feel closer to God when we are praying, reading our Bible , or some how being faithful to our local church. So we think that God’s love ebbs and flows along with our actions. Of course this is a completely backwards approach. We don’t awaken God’s love for us by practicing certain spiritual disciplines. I think sometimes we use these things to try and prove our love for God. Whatever the spiritual discipline is, be it prayer, fasting, reading your Bible, whatever it is these are all gifts from God to us and to help us to have fellowship with Him.
- What does our eyes see and what does our brains tell us, missing the heart. ? We see and it tells us things, like that’s not big enough to bother God over that. It’s a small thing and I can handle it , until of course it turns into a big monster, that we have no idea how to handle .☺️☺️ If it’s important to you, then it’s important to God , regardless of how trite it may seem. I’m constantly amazed at some of the lies, we believe so easily because it’s pervasive throughout our culture. Another half truth, which is actually a full lie. We tell ourselves that we got ourselves into this mess and we have to get ourselves out. Again, very noble, or did you just flip the martyr card over?☺️☺️. Just keep that nose to the milestone. God wants to be your constant help. If you ask eighty percent of the population to describe their life in a word, it would be ” Busy”, the other twenty percent would answer that question with, ” extremely Busy “. ☺️☺️.
- We all have stuff, and yeah!, it can be a lot! Kids, grandkids, demanding schedule at work, social settings and even our places of worship are just bustling with hurry up and it should have been done yesterday ☺️☺️. Elderly and aging parents, just to name a few, but I just have trouble believing that God is pleased with us living at the speed of light☺️☺️. There is this thing called the sabbath and we abuse it as much as the people in the old testament did. Bring back the blue laws…just wishful thinking ☺️☺️. Maybe you will find this one as funny as I do. God gave us the command to rest, and then we actually do it we feel some what guilty when we actually do it. We think I should be doing XY&Z, sometimes even when we are on vacation.☺️. The funny part, we violate all of God’s other commands and not one single thought about feeling guilty ☺️☺️. We are so backwards ☺️
- Maybe get some Windex or some other cleaning solution for our spectacles, because we obviously aren’t seeing all that we should be☺️☺️. I’m not even talking about things coming around the corner, but the things that are right in front of us. I think that the biggest thing is to see people and to not see them as a means to an end, or a box to check. Seeing with the proper perspective goes from I have to spend time with my aging father, to I get to spend time with my Dad. Final thought, if you were raised with the belief that you can have it all and do it all….that’s another lie…learning to prioritize ☺️☺️.
- Till Next Time ✌️ Peace!
- Sandy The Southerner
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