looking through me

Tag: lessons

September 4, 2014

scrape your lenses

“Scrape your lenses!”

That was a constant refrain when I was a child. My glasses-wearing dad could not understand how my brother and I saw through the layers of smudges, water spots and accumulated grime on our glasses.

I traded the glasses for contacts at the end of elementary school, and during college I had Lasik. But as my twenties waned I again found myself sporting non-optional eyewear.

I no longer need my dad’s reminder—I clean my glasses faithfully.

But his words still reverberate.

My vision clouds so easily. I find myself squinting through the buildup of bitterness and worry. Doubt and insecurity insidiously layer on top. A dusting of noise and busyness mixes in.

And then a voice cuts through, “Scrape your lenses!”

Oh, those are never the actual words being said, but they’re the translation my heart hears. They come in the concern of a colleague over my reaction to a situation at work, the observation of a friend in a small group, a sermon that seems to be aimed directly at me, the scent of roses and lemon blossoms the breeze wafts my way, the uninhibited laughter of a child . . .

Suddenly it’s clear I’ve been looking through the glass dimly; unaware my sight was altered. I need the reminder to be wary of complacent, lazy, myopic spiritual vision: scrape your lenses, Kristen . . . scrape your lenses.

 

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

7 Comments
August 8, 2014

reading my writing

Reading my own writing is bizarre—like looking in a Picasso-esque mirror. It’s such a fragmented image of me.

In reality each piece is a snapshot, a moment in time, how I was processing a particular aspect of life on a particular day. Often they are thoughts that had been bubbling, inarticulate, unformed just under the surface for long stretches. And then in a gracious moment of clarity they congealed enough to fit into words. I’ve simply preserved them as reminders for myself in the hazier moments.

I fear I seem much more put together and a far deeper thinker in writing than I really am. They are my words—my thoughts—but they are an incomplete picture. The vast majority of my thoughts remain haphazard: a nebulous, amorphous jumbled blend of sentence fragments and vague images.

So when they do come together and fall into a logical shape I want to preserve them. Not because they’re in any way remarkable, but because I am frighteningly good at getting lost in the foggy moments. When it’s dark, I forget the light. When my visibility shrinks, I need to be reminded my field of vision has been greater before . . . and it will be again.

That’s why I write. It takes away my excuse to live narrowly. It takes away my deniability. It holds me accountable for lessons learned.

But who I am is both much more and much less than the words trailing behind me in print.

Leave a comment