It seems like life is all about what we can see.
But what happens when we can’t see?
What happens when the paradigm blurs and we’re left to wander, not even in the dark, but in the fuzziness – life without definition?
Mother’s Day, sitting on the front porch in the sun…
He lunged before I could stop him. I should have seen it coming. It’s happened so many times before. “BUT I WANT TO…!” The argument is always a tired and tried variation of the same.
Chase pushes the boundaries… I reestablish the boundaries… Chase struggles to give an appropriate voice to his disappointment.
Then comes the lunge – and if I’m lucky and wise; I see it coming.
But on Mother’s Day, of all special days, I did not. And my glasses hit the pavement with a sickening crack, splitting clean down the center – as clean a break as our lives are messy.
His screaming stopped as the import of the action sunk in. A damage on the weekend…no back up glasses, no contacts, no nothing. Just blur. The world was suddenly reduced to a foot or two in front of my face.
Driving only as a necessity… Clean the floors of toys so mom doesn’t trip… Try not to walk into anything.
“I’m so sorry, Mommy”; he said in his remorse-filled way. The anger having drained as fast as it came. “Can’t we fix them?”
Yes, but not now. I would stay in a state of undefined navigation for four days.
At first, on the surface, the lesson seemed to come for Chase: your actions affect others. Sometimes the anger will leave more than sadness – it will leave brokenness that can’t be easily repaired. Those were the thoughts that unfolded as we stood on the front walk and stared at the broken pieces of black plastic that had been my constant companions for years.
But somehow, in the four days that followed, the lesson turned from Chase to me.
How do I live when I can’t see?
Things are so much easier when I can either close my eyes for total nothingness or open my eyes for total clarity.
I found that I did not like the in-between. The waiting. Surrounded by things I know, but could not see. Things that were not clear until they were close.
The truth of seeing life “through a mirror dimly” is frustrating. The truth of a “God, can’t you fix it?” prayer answered with “Yes, but not now” is often more than we want to bear.
Shapes rise up out of the distance and become clear just as they hit you in the face: like cancer, like the child in trouble at school, like the husband who has to work late again, like feeling alone. Clarity makes for safety while the lack of it forces me to rely on something other than sight – something outside myself.
Funny how broken pieces of plastic on Mother’s Day force me into “seeing” weakness and strength in new ways. And, if I’m honest, I wasn’t so much “seeing” as “re-learning”. Perhaps we are – at times and seasons – robbed of the sight we most rely on so as to SEE HIM.
I can be weak because HE is strong.
I can wait because HE is time itself.
I can rest because HE fights for me.
And when asked to, I can abide in blurriness because the truth is that my life is only undefined to me. To God, our lives are deeply, perfectly clear. Always and forever.
So, in the blur, the noise, the wait for faith to be sight, we wait on Him: moment by moment.
“And Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight, the clouds be rolled back as a scroll; the trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend…even so, it is well with my soul.” ~ H.G. Spafford