Seeing Clearly

I'm just home from the eye doctor--my annual visit--actually about two and a half years went by--because I really hate going for about a million reasons.

It takes sooooo long, like three hours, and they dilate my eyes and do all manor of poking and prying and testing. When I asked if they could take a fancy computer picture of my eyes instead of dilating, my new doctor said, "oh, yes, let's do that too, you can drive to our office in St. Paul right after this and they have that machine there and it will only take up an hour or two more of your day." I paraphrase. He still dilated my eyes.

Here is the laundry list. .  . preglaucoma, pretty much a given that I will have this, my right eye at -15.5 and left eye at -14.75, suspicious looking optic nerves, eye pressure on the high end, my grandpa lost his vision to it and my sister is already on the drops. Cataracts--I'm getting them, but good news, if they get bad enough I can have surgery and it will actually completely correct my vision. Bring it on. . . .

The contact lens gal is my hero. She keeps me out of coke bottle shaped glasses. I'm also at the limit of commercially available contacts and custom lenses break the bank so we are talking about glasses to read and different glasses to drive at night, all to wear over my contacts. I'll take it. Insurance might not.

When I told her the biggest priority is reading music, she casually remarked that looking back and forth from music to a conductor is the most difficult thing for eyes to do. Yikes. Good thing I don't have to do that--oh wait, I do have to do that.

A know half a dozen people with debilitating vision, so everyday when I pop an inexpensive disposable piece of plastic into my eyes and go about my day I'm actually filled with gratitude. If things are a little fuzzy around the edges I'm happy with the big picture.

How we see things. It's really important. Last week I was thinking about something similar, it was how we see people. What do we see in them? Who sees the best in us?

I'm reading a book by Richard Rohr called Things Hidden. He says, when someone else loves you, they give you not just themselves, but for some reason they give you back your own self, but now a truer and better self.

A truer and better self.

That's enough right there to make me cry. I think about the people I know who overlooked a lot to see the best in me. Teachers. Parents. Grandparents. My spouse. My children.

What we see in people can be what they become. It's not that we fool ourselves and then go vent about them behind their back, though I'm guilty of that. It's that we honestly do see the best in them.

It's easy to see the best in little five year old Cassy Erickson, my sweet alumni. Other people are harder. We might have to put on God's glasses to see the best in them.

My grandma Hope thought I hung the moon. I could do no wrong. Betty Mallard took a recovering French horn major into her piano studio at UT. Doris Harrel helped me afford teacher training when I didn't have a dime. My mom and dad always told me I could succeed at whatever I choose to do. And, I knew I met my match when I felt like my very best self on my first date with Bill.

So, how to see the best in people? How to carry this forth? My sister says to sort the grain from the chaff. She's a very compassionate person. Compassion also requires boundaries.

What if we treated every student like a little Cassy? Innocent. Pure. Intelligent. Musical. What if we accepted nothing less from everyone from our children to strangers.

We'd have to stop putting negative labels on people like--weird, rude, irritating, stupid. . . We'd have to meet them with a clean slate every day. With boundaries, yes.

That's what I want. To bring out the best in people. To see them through God's glasses. Close up or far away, in the light and in the dark. I've said this before. It just takes reminding.

Lord, help me to see through your eyes. Guide my thoughts, words, and deeds to reflect your love and in that love bring out a truer and better self in myself and others. Amen.