Thursday, December 15, 2011

A Far-Sighted Girl With A Near-Sighted Problem


Whoa. Look At Those Eyes.

How about a moment of vulnerability? You know, coming clean about my past and all that...well. When I was a little kid, I had a lazy eye. Yes. It is true. One of my eyes seemed to love looking at the bridge of my nose.

As you may be able to imagine, the solution was a large pair of glasses. Not just glasses but the kind of glasses that were about a centimeter thick and made my eyes appear the size of oreos. It was not the coolest thing for a kid. I also had to sleep with a special boot/leg brace thing when I was small, but that is another story. 

In addition to having the lazy eye, I am incredibly far sighted. The lazy eye has been fixed but I still have to wear my contacts to allow me to see anything remotely close to my face. Its funny, because I am far sighted in pretty much every way. I love to look at the horizon and think about what is coming next. I am a long term thinker and spend time imagining all that the future holds. 

I am made that way I suppose. A dreamer and a visionary. We are actually all made to be far sighted. To fix our eyes on Heaven. To live in a Kingdom reality where our lives are not simply about our career, hobbies or personal gifting. We were made to live beyond ourselves. 

But I have a problem sometimes. More often that I would like to admit. I begin to have near-sighted problems. I start focusing only on what is right in front of me. I pick an issue and stare at it until I have a headache. I hold it up so close to my face in attempt to see it better and in doing so, I block all views of anything else. I become obsessive. We all get bogged down sometimes due to an unhealthy focus on a small piece of a bigger picture.

Perhaps it is obsessive about a fear. What if I risk and God doesn't come through? There must be something wrong with me. I don't know what but I know there is something wrong. Maybe I have a chronic illness? Maybe I have a mental illness? You might laugh, but I have met a large number of people who have at one point thought they were actually loosing their mind. 

Or maybe you are so obsessed with not failing that you forget that you God ever even called you. Will people follow me? Does everyone think I am an idiot? Can they tell I am insecure? If I blow this they won't give me another shot. God is having doubts about if He can use me.

We get obsessed with what we are not. We get obsessed with who we are not. We get obsessed with who we will never become. We fixate and freeze. Unable to look beyond the thing we have put smack in front of our eyes. We blind ourselves. 

Our perspective is off. Headaches begin to plague us, and our vision gets blurry. 

I was made to see clearly. I am a far sighted girl who acts nearsighted sometimes. It is a pain. It is frustrating and I do it to myself. My big God fades into a blur in the distance and I only focus on what is immediate or what feels immediate. 

I can't see the big plans of God that are laid out in front of me, when I only focus on the challenge that is looking me in the face.  I am a far sighted girl with a near sighted problem. Good thing God does Lasik for free.


2 comments:

  1. I love your blog. Such wisdom! God's been blowing my mind with Romans 4 lately. The line that's been replaying in my mind is actually from the message version and says, "When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do but on what God said he would do." It's so easy to only see what I can't, but what He has said is so much clearer! So in line with your revelation; couldn't help but share the wealth.

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  2. What a fantastic verse! Thanks for sharing it.

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