perspective

i started to think about this word perspective tonight... how we all see things through the lens of our life- through our own experiences, hurt, pain, emotion. it often influences our interactions with others. i encountered this tonight while i was at a class offered by my church. a woman, who i don't know very well, came up to me before class and tried to make small talk. given my current situation i was a little quiet and reserved and wasn't able to really engage in conversation with her. she walked away seeming a bit embarrassed by what appeared to be my rejection of her, but what was in actuality me being self-absorbed in my own pain and unable to connect with her even in the most basic of ways.

my scope of viewing the world and people has been altered by recent events, but i'm not the only one affected by that- others around me are as well. another example: at the end of the night a different woman realized that her car had been broken into. someone took a brick and threw it into the passenger side window of her car and stole the GPS off her dash. the woman was obviously very distraught but i found it hard to have much compassion for her. why? because i was viewing through my lens of hurt, anger and frustration. i wanted to scream at her, "you're really so upset over a broken window? that can be fixed! you can buy a new GPS tomorrow! what about my life that looks like that shattered glass all over the pavement? this is not fixable today or tomorrow or even the next day!"

perspective.


obviously i didn't scream at her. not outwardly at least.

image found here

i remember years back when i was helping to lead the youth ministry at my old church and we taught a lesson about perspective and the way we view the world. we were trying to help the kids understand that they needed to see the world through a God's lens. one of the other leaders coined this term as "theoscope." this was derived from the Greek words "theo" meaning God and "scope" meaning to look or view carefully. so it was essentially the idea of viewing people, situations, the world through this God-lens and not through our own distorted view.

oh how i wish it was easier to do that. right now it feels like my lenses are covered with the fog of betrayal and brokenness and i find it so hard to put them down. sometimes we're afraid to see the world through clear lenses (free of the hurt and pain) because it feels like it lessens the severity of our situation. we like the dirty lens. we want others to see it. to acknowledge it. to suffer in the pain with us. to know we aren't alone.

at least that's true of me today.

i don't really have a conclusion for this post because i'm still-so-in-it. i just had to share it. writing has been therapeutic for me right now. that could last or fade, but for now i'm going with it.