Through His Eyes?

I have frequently referred to the effects of my mother’s and grandmother’s favorite behavior control phrase which was, “What will people think?” As far as I could tell and as I recall now, Mom took that phrase to heart in her own life, but Granny was another story altogether. While she was obviously concerned with appearances she was a dedicated woman of propriety. In other words she was far less concerned with physical appearances than she was with behavior.

If we were observed engaging in less than absolutely normal, acceptable protestant behavior those words, “What will people think?” were the first words out of the mouths of both women. Being what I think was a normal child of the ‘40s and ‘50s I heard the phrase with consistent frequency.

Living in a world consumed with appearances, made the effects of that upbringing an integral part of my decision making processes for most of my life. It never occurred to me to make even the most modest effort to address the possibility of what life would be like, if every act was not predicated with that thought. And then change became mandatory. It became mandatory because there was no way I “Georgia” was going to be able to live anything resembling a normal life.

In “Dear Mom and Dad” I wrote about those experiences of leaving the house for the first few times and the sense that everyone in the world could see me and were laughing uncontrollably at the sight. It was horrible. On those occasions my heart nearly exploded from the flood of fear induced adrenaline. I managed to overcome the fears by sheer force of will power fueled by the burning desire to be “real.” The problem of fearing the opinions of others still existed. I just overcame the fear enough to have some life of my own.

As time passed, and I spent more and more time in the company of others like me, I began to see them as a mirror of me. Fear of being discovered was rampant. True, not everyone exhibited the fear, but those who didn’t were rare. The fear of what others thought was masked by statements like, my neighbors, my boss, my family “will never understand.” I hated that fear. It permeated every relationship, every act, it even marred the stolen moments of self-expression our gatherings were meant to facilitate.

I knew the fear and I knew its source, but try as I may to ignore it, stifle it, kill it, I couldn’t.

I don’t remember when or where I arrived at the notion that I was, in essence, disputing the way God created me, but that’s what finally occurred to me. I’ve heard some people call that kind of idea or awareness a come-to-Jesus moment; an Ahaa moment. Whatever you choose to call it, I got it, and eventually realized that it was that very idea that Isaiah was talking about when he wrote, “Does a jar ever say ‘The potter who made me is stupid’?”

Like most everything else Abba does, or at least has done in my life, He is the perfect father and he sneaks ideas into our heads in a way that makes us think the ideas are ours. Then He waits to see if we recognize the ideas as coming from Him and if so do we have the presence of mind to thank Him? It took a while but I finally did.

I still wasn’t “there” yet. There was still one element of understanding I didn’t have, and looking back now I wonder why I was so slow to reach that critical juncture in my life. Once again I can’t tell you when or how I finally realized what was missing, but when I did my life changed in ways I never would have dreamed of.

I had spent my entire life looking at myself through the prism of what I thought other people saw when they looked at me. It was a subconscious image of someone who had everything going for them but somehow still managed to fail at everything attempted. I put up a magnificent front for others to see, but deep down there was this nasty voice which repeatedly pointed out, that they really didn’t know me. They didn’t know how flawed I was and if they did they wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me.

It was one of those moments when I was wallowing in the fear of what others might think that it finally occurred to me … What does God think of me? Asking Him what He thought of me didn’t seem like the right approach. I guess that question as well as the solution was out of some sermon that I didn’t really hear, or some scripture I really didn’t absorb.

At last, I asked Abba to let me see myself, the person He created me to be, through His eyes.

Did I have an immediate vision of that person, that soul? Not hardly. One day I suddenly realized that I was really happy, and for the first time content with the way, and who, I am. Does that mean that I don’t give a whit about what people think about me anymore? No it doesn’t. I does mean however, that if I sense that they don’t like me or the way I am, it doesn’t affect the way I feel about me. You see, I do want people to like me. How else am I ever going to be able share the message that Abba has assigned to me, which is … if I can find peace and happiness at my age by accepting and seeing myself as Abba intended all along, anyone can. But first you have to ask the same question I did.

“Please Abba, Let me see myself, the person You created me to be through Your eyes.

Through His Eyes?

I have frequently referred to the effects of my mother’s and grandmother’s favorite behavior control phrase which was, “What will people think?” As far as I could tell and as I recall now, Mom took that phrase to heart in her own life, but Granny was another story altogether. While she was obviously concerned with appearances she was a dedicated woman of propriety. In other words she was far less concerned with physical appearances than she was with behavior.

If we were observed engaging in less than absolutely normal, acceptable protestant behavior those words, “What will people think?” were the first words out of the mouths of both women. Being what I think was a normal child of the ‘40s and ‘50s I heard the phrase with consistent frequency.
Living in a world consumed with appearances, made the effects of that upbringing an integral part of my decision making processes for most of my life. It never occurred to me to make even the most modest effort to address the possibility of what life would be like, if every act was not predicated with that thought. And then change became mandatory. It became mandatory because there was no way I “Georgia” was going to be able to live anything resembling a normal life.

In “Dear Mom and Dad” I wrote about those experiences of leaving the house for the first few times and the sense that everyone in the world could see me and were laughing uncontrollably at the sight. It was horrible. On those occasions my heart nearly exploded from the flood of fear induced adrenaline. I managed to overcome the fears by sheer force of will power fueled by the burning desire to be “real.” The problem of fearing the opinions of others still existed. I just overcame the fear enough to have some life of my own.

As time passed, and I spent more and more time in the company of others like me, I began to see them as a mirror of me. Fear of being discovered was rampant. True, not everyone exhibited the fear, but those who didn’t were rare. The fear of what others thought was masked by statements like, my neighbors, my boss, my family “will never understand.” I hated that fear. It permeated every relationship, every act, it even marred the stolen moments of self-expression our gatherings were meant to facilitate.

I knew the fear and I knew its source, but try as I may to ignore it, stifle it, kill it, I couldn’t.

I don’t remember when or where I arrived at the notion that I was in essence disputing the way God created me, but that’s what finally occurred to me. I’ve heard some people call that kind of idea or awareness a come to Jesus moment; an Aha moment. Whatever you choose to call it, I got it and eventually realized that it was that very idea that Isaiah was talking about when he wrote, “Does a jar ever say ‘The potter who made me is stupid’?”

Like most everything else Abba does, or at least has done in my life, He is the perfect father and he sneaks ideas into our heads in a way that makes us think the ideas are ours. Then He waits to see if we recognize the ideas as coming from Him and if so do we have the presence of mind to thank Him? It took a while but I finally did.

I still wasn’t “there” yet. There was still one element of understanding I didn’t have, and looking back now I wonder why I was so slow to reach that critical juncture in my life. Once again I can’t tell you when or how I finally realized what was missing, but when I did my life changed in ways I never would have dreamed of.

I had spent my entire life looking at myself through the prism of what I thought other people saw when they looked at me. It was a subconscious image of someone who had everything going for them but somehow still managed to fail at everything attempted. I put up a magnificent front for others to see, but deep down there was this nasty voice which repeatedly pointed out, that they really didn’t know me. They didn’t know how flawed I was and if they did they wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me.

It was one of those moments when I was wallowing in the fear of what others might think that it finally occurred to me … What does God think of me? Asking Him what He thought of me didn’t seem like the right approach. I guess that question as well as the solution was out of some sermon that I didn’t really hear, or some scripture I really didn’t absorb.

At last, I asked Abba to let me see myself, the person He created me to be, through His eyes.

Did I have an immediate vision of that person, that soul? Not hardly. One day I suddenly realized that I was really happy, and for the first time content with the way, and who, I am. Does that mean that I don’t give a whit about what people think about me anymore? No it doesn’t. I does mean however, that if I sense that they don’t like me or the way I am, it doesn’t affect the way I feel about me. You see, I do want people to like me. How else am I ever going to be able share the message that Abba has assigned to me, which is … if I can find peace and happiness at my age by accepting and seeing myself as Abba intended all along, anyone can. But first you have to ask the same question I did.

“Please Abba, Let me see myself, the person You created me to be through Your eyes.”

Aunt Lizzavie’s Shelf

I can’t help but reflect on the gifts I have received over the years as I’ve left the gift giving season of 2014 behind. There were rare occasions when I received a gift that I really wanted. Christmas of 1951 I received a horse. I wasn’t expecting a horse, I hadn’t even dreamed of getting a horse, but never the less there she was. When I think about the way I discovered the gift it reminds me of the way Ralphie found his treasured Red Ryder BB gun in “A Christmas Story”.

After all the gifts had been opened, Dad said, “I think there’s one more back behind the tree, there in the corner. It was a bridle, wrapped without a box, and when I opened it my first thought was “oh whoop ta dee” a store bought bridle for Merrylegs, Nick’s Shetland pony. The bridle we had, up to that point, had been made entirely by Dad, including the bit which he fashioned out of very heavy gauge copper wire he undoubtedly scrounged from the scrap heap at the refinery. But when I held it up for further examination I realized it was way too big for Merrylegs.

As I headed for the back door toward the horse lot I imagined a gleaming Black Beauty would be awaiting me at the barn. But unlike Ralphie, who would have suffered similar disappointment had he found a cork gun in the box he opened, I found a skinny red speckled white mare which looked as though she was soon destined for the dog food factory. We named her Ginger, after the nasty tempered grey mare in Black Beauty. Thus began a long term love/hate relationship that actually lasted into my late 20;s when I was present as she breathed her last in a barn near Uncle Jelly’s farm, where she had spent the last 20 years of her life bringing in the milk cows every evening.

I believe that almost everyone has received at least one gift like this one at some time or another in their life. Gifts are generally associated with either a birthday or Christmas, which when you think about it is a birthday celebration, though today I don’t think that a majority of people associate Christmas with the term “birthday.” But, however you think of gifts and the reason for them, we all have to acknowledge that there are gifts we have little appreciation for. For some people a gift is accompanied by a receipt, so the recipient can exchange it for something they like better, something that fits better or that is preferred over the original.

Gift giving didn’t originate in that stable 2000 plus years ago, but it has become the primary reason for the season whether people like it or not. That particular gift did not come with a receipt that we could use to redeem for something more to our liking. It did come with the option of being opened or left under the tree. The idea of gifts at that time of year has become tradition because of the Magi and the gifts they brought to the stable. They were visible, tangible usable gifts and thus we tend to think in those terms when we think about gifts. But, what about intangible gifts, the ones we tend to ignore or overlook?

Each one of us has “gifts”, natural abilities, talents and passions. These things are often ignored, and they’re ignored just as often because we don’t appreciate them anymore than I appreciated that speckled old mare, because she wasn’t what I wanted. Just as often we put those gifts on our “Aunt Lizzavie” shelf. You know the one, the top shelf where it can be ignored like the purple glass grapes or the ugly tie that “Aunt Lizzavie” gave us last Christmas, which we only take out when she’s in town and then quickly put back on that shelf as soon as she leaves so we don’t have to look at it, or think about it again until she returns.

We all have “gifts”, abilities, talents and passions that Abba has given us. But, all too often we treat those gifts like purple glass grapes and ugly ties which we put away on our mental and emotional “Aunt Lizzavie” shelves in our mental and emotional “Aunt Lizzavie” hall closets or worse yet our mental attics where they do nothing but gather dust over the years.

How do I know this tendency so well? I know it because I spent so many years of my life doing everything I just described; either leaving gifts unopened, failing to appreciate them because they weren’t exactly what I thought I should have, or taking them out only occasionally when my mental “Aunt Lizzavie” put in an emotional appearance.

I spent most of my life feeling sorry for myself because I hadn’t received the gifts I wanted, beauty, brains, the winning lottery ticket. In short, I was seldom a truly happy person, and by truly happy, I mean someone who awakened each and every morning with the sense that life was good, that I would spend that day secure in the knowledge that whatever came my way would be for the best, and would be what Abba intended for me at any given moment.

Today I am delighted with the gifts I have received because I finally took them down from the “Aunt Lizzavie” shelf of my mind, opened them up and set those purple glass grapes out on the coffee table of my life for all to see.

Have you considered what the moment will be like when you are face to face with Abba at last, and how you’re going to account for the gifts He gave you? How about it? What’s on your “Aunt Lizzavie” shelf?