Grown-Up Eyes

I’m approaching 40, the age at which many people begin losing their ability to see close up. But God is merciful and compensates for this by giving us a new kind of eyesight. It’s called perspective.

When we’re little, we think that whatever is going on around us must be all there is. We assume that everyone’s mother must start drinking before 8 a.m. if that’s what ours did, or that all parents must stomp around for days without speaking because that’s what is normal in our house. Sometimes it’s the opposite; we have it so good that we don’t realize there are kids who regularly go to bed hungry or who don’t have a mom who tucks them in every night. We hold onto our own “normal” for a remarkably long time, until adolescence and at last adulthood push us out into stark reality.

I had a similar experience recently. I returned to the place I used to work for a celebration of two veteran staff who are now in their mid 90s. The event was well done and the staff we honored are two of the most inspiring people I’ve ever known. It was a privilege just to be among the standing-room-only crowd. But as I sat in the back row of the balcony of a room that held such huge memories for me, I got a shift in perspective. This room, in fact, this whole building, which was the site of my first foray into public-speaking, in which I attended numerous meetings that impacted my life, and in which I was even married—well, it’s just a room. Being that it’s in a castle and all, it’s fairly magnificent, but it’s not necessarily any more hallowed ground than my living room.

And the people sitting in the chairs below me? The mostly gray-haired people I have revered as God’s most chosen ambassadors? Lovely, godly people, yes, but no more so than the moms from preschool. Sitting in this room were people who have struggled with divorce, drugs, alcoholism, wayward children, and faith-shattering doubts just like everyone else. They’re not saints. They’re just people. And the mission to which they all are called? The mission that so strongly bound me together with them? It’s a beautiful one, and they do it very well, but it’s not the only way to advance the Gospel and make disciples. I used to think we had the market on discipleship, that no one did it like we did. Now I see that God is much too big to be confined to one particular method or mission.

What used to seem to me as the Best Way I now see as merely one way. How weird is it that it took 16 years and heartbreaking separation to give me this perspective? But that’s maturity’s job, I guess. To knock things off pedestals and put things in right perspective. Growing up is a good thing, even if it means living the rest of our lives with a pair of reading glasses perched on our heads.