I Love........Perspective

I love PERSPECTIVE. So often we look at something head on, and only see the surface. We'll twist our head a bit and see something that had been totally out of view before. Then maybe we'll look at it from behind, and once again we have to shift our opinion. It's not what it appeared to be at first glance. It's amazing when we realize it, but often our memories forget to remind us of this wonder the next time we find ourselves gazing intently at something, and so we start the process all over again. We have to re-gain perspective.

It's probably why I love having people in my life with very diverse outlooks. I especially love those who are original thinkers....who don't take the average opinion  and make it their own, but who carefully consider topics using their own senses, information gathering, experimentation and judgment, and come to their own conclusions. They have perspective.

I remember in college I took a loathsome astronomy observatory lab. We had to take telescopes and point them into the heavens and do some sort of measurements. Yeah, I didn't understand what it all meant then either. To compound my problem, I picked the fun people as my group mates. Dumb idea. Dumb, dumb idea. So what is this group of fun, but not necessarily astronomy-smart, people to do? We would go around to the other groups, get their answers, average them all (I had some math skills!), and whatever we came up with was our answer. Great idea, right?! Nope! We failed miserably. In coming up with the averages, we were never getting the correct answers. One group may be off by a long shot, others right on point. Even throwing high and low answers out wouldn't work, because what if only one group understood the concept (as often happened)? Since we didn't quite understand the question, we couldn't discern whether the answers made any sense. We were losers. I picked a different group the next time.

Sometimes my thinking gets in a rut. OK, sometimes I don't think at all. I find I am going through life by rote, not thoughtfully. If you surround yourselves with a few thoughtful types, they won't let you stay in that place for long. They will challenge the lazy mind you have adopted and make sure you do not rest until you form a thoughtful opinion of your own. There aren't a lot of these folks in the world, but I am blessed with a few I hold dear. They are jewels...it matters to them that I think for myself, and they would be highly insulted if I simply adopted their opinions as my own. I feel the same about them. Without thinking before we discuss, and without coming to the table with a point of view, we lose the ability for iron to sharpen iron. But when we bring together two (or more) different points of view, we often discover new truths. Sometimes we adopt a new opinion, a compilation of something from one and something from another. But in the end it seems....more right!

Some folks really hate individual perspective.....they think we all need to look where they are looking and see what they are seeing. The possibility that their view may not be right is forbidden to ever enter their minds. The muscles of their minds (yes, we're speaking figuratively here) are quite strong in one sense, because they hold tight to their single point of view. What would that be called - brain isometrics? It's difficult to make them budge. And they don't, because they fear what would happen if they really exercise that muscle. You discuss a subject with them and they won't participate - their mind is like a battering ram. It's why we call them the hard-headed ones. Arguing with them is pointless, because they will not consider the possibility of being wrong.

There are times I get overwhelmed by how much I don't know....or by how many things I need to learn over and over. I feel like my brain just isn't big enough to think through the problems I encounter in life.  I worry and stress and think I am doing it all wrong, but can't figure out how to get it all right.

Ultimately, when it gets down to it, the trump card in the thinking game is that God is bigger. Life's problems really can appear to be enormous. We really may be inadequate to handle. But there is comfort in knowing that God, the designer and creator of the universe, is in control. While I only see those things in my line of vision, He has the total picture in His sight. He has the ultimate perspective.

I love perspective.

Half Full or Half Empty?

I've never quite figured out whether I am an optimist or a pessimist......is that glass half full or half empty?  Each glass seems to be a bit different to me, so I can't seem to come up with a consistent answer to that question. On most days I can come by an answer easily, but while it's half full on some days it is very clearly half empty on others.  Yeah, I know.....I think I over-analyze, too.

I'd love to be an eternal optimist.  Look at the world as everything being basically good.  As everything working out in the end.  Think the odds for most things are in our favor.  See people live happily ever after.  Trust that God has got it all handled and we get to just watch and see it all play out.  And I do believe that most days.   I usually believe that at my heart level.

But then there are the thoughts in the crevices of my mind.  The lack of trust that the good will last.  The part just waiting for the days when those insurmountable problems crop up.  When I remember that we live in a sinful world.  When I see people suffering, not of their own accord, not by something that they chose to invite into their lives, but by something that intrudes upon them anyway.  It eats away what was once the beautiful life they created for themselves and totally takes over.  There is the person whose life cancer tries to steal.  There is the person who had the job they loved, they worked hard at it for 30 years, they thought they would retire from it and then come in one day and find out that it has been eliminated.  Or the person who thought they were inviting in that prince or princess into their home and it turns out to be a wolf or a witch.  It's harder to see the happily ever after in the midst of the pain.  (Yeah, I read a lot of fairy tales growing up.  So????)

When it gets down to it, though, there are days you want the glass to be half empty and there days when you want that glass to be half full.  Because it all depends on what is in the glass!  I had my first colonoscopy this year.  If you haven't had one, I promise you.....you want to believe the glass is half empty.  The fact that your mind is telling you it is half full is proof that sometimes your mind is very evil.  BUT.....when you get that pronouncement of good health or they find polyps or cancer at early stages and take them away, you remember that every drop of that nasty liquid was as a whole very, very good.  At least you remember that for a while.

Because of my polyp, I will have to have another colonoscopy in five years instead of the standard ten.  I suspect when that time comes to consume the liquid to prep for it, I will see that glass as very, very full.  And very, very gross.  So would that make me an optimist or a pessimist?  But then I think that maybe somewhere in the world today there is someone altogether brilliant, creating great alternatives for that foul liquid.  In five years they could remove that question from the equation.  I think I am going to choose to believe this will happen....which must mean I have optimistic leanings.  But I won't be surprised if it doesn't....so........maybe I am a pessimist?

Half full, or half empty....it's all a matter of perspective.   Sometimes we want the glass to be full, sometimes we want it to be empty.  Sometimes we notice the good, sometimes we notice the bad.  Someone's optimism is usually someone's pessimism.  But when it gets down to it, sometimes you just need to enjoy the act of being offered a glass, tasting what's in it, and not waste time measuring.  Instead you get to decide whether you want to drink or lay down the glass and walk away. Choices are so very often a good thing.

So now....am I a realist or an idealist?  Guess that is a subject for another day.

Coming Out of the Tomb

Today is Easter Sunday!  He is risen!  Look and see what is going on around you.  Worshipful church services (full of people who just may not have darkened that church doorstep for a while), shouts of delight as kids peruse the items left by the Easter Bunny (thanks Easter Bunny!), people deciding whether they really want to eat those Easter eggs they dyed (I usually vote no, unless they have been refrigerated), families and friends gathering and eating together.  And at the McKinney household the great annual Easter egg hunt.  We've done this since the earliest years of life of my oldest niece Sara.  As she now has three kids of her own, suffice it to say it has been a long time!  It has become my favorite family holiday activity.  Filling the eggs with little prizes, hiding them, and then the little bodies running all Nana and Grandpa's yard, searching them out.  The looks on the kid's faces, the pride of all they have found, and then the continuing celebration when they open the eggs.  You can't help smile....and laugh....and celebrate along with them.  And an added bonus....there are so many hidden, and not always found, that my dad gets to continue to find them throughout the year.  He loves that, I know.  (Hey Dad, maybe this year you'll find a money egg!)

Last weekend I went to a health symposium.  Another geek area for me....I love learning about nutrition and wellness, and exploring both theories and fact. Attended a workshop that had an interesting name....which  I can't completely recall (of course), but had something to do with "pesky weeds."  The name intrigued me.  Since I am allergic to most of the outdoors, I was hopeful it would give me natural solutions to what ails me.  But what I thought was in the egg wasn't there.

The "cute as a button" instructor Stephanie (www.botanicalmama.com) was a clinical herbalist.  She began by saying she is a believer that each season we need to detox our bodies.  But before I had a chance to roll my eyes, she said not by liquid diets or anything like that.  Instead it is by nourishing them.  She said that springing up around us naturally in God's earth are those things that we can use to bring health to our bodies.  She had a short time to speak, so she concentrated on three....violets, chickweed and dandelions.  We all probably have different opinions of their value.  Do you see them as pesky weeds, as flowers, or more?  She sees them as more and she taught us to open our eyes to the possibilities.  Yes, we ate all three during the session (I had eaten both violets and dandelions on salads in the past.  Just because they were served to me....and I was told they were edible.  But I had forgotten about this until she reminded me of the possibility and hadn't thought that these beautiful flowers in my yard could also be dinner.)  Stephanie made salads, salad dressings, pesto, teas, vinegars, bug spray....all kinds of things out of these three things that most people just mow right on over.  I have a special love for what I call wild flowers and others call weeds, so the idea that they can not only be beautiful, but also useful as a source for food, medicine and wellness....definitely got my attention.  Because it all made sense to me.  I think there is an order to the universe and we don't even scratch the surface of discovering its treasures.  Another Easter egg opened....with a pretty cool prize inside.

My friend Al commented this week that too many people get stuck on the cross as the symbol of our faith, while we really should celebrate the empty tomb.  I agree.  The gift is in the cross, but the celebration is in the resurrection.  And as we live worshipful lives, we are not to remain at the foot of the cross weeping or residing as a corpse in the tomb.  Because He is risen.  He is risen, indeed.  For us.  So we may have life.  Abundant life.  Exciting life.  Think of it like this.  God has hidden Easter eggs all over this world for us to find.  Lots of interesting, beautiful, exciting possibilities.  Little love gifts showing who He is and how He loves us, often found in unexpected places.  Go ahead.....you are His child.  Run out there and find some of those eggs......and it's OK and right to get excited by the prizes you have discovered.  If you are alive, you haven't aged out of  life's Easter egg hunt.  And the hunt and the celebration, the resurrection, continues every single day of the year!