Bigger Picture Moment: With Unshuttered Eyes

Strangely, it's like this: I walk through the living room without noticing the displaced stack of books on the floor, because they've been there for days.  They begin to look appropriate.  The towels from last Friday's swimming session are still wadded by the back door, and the lone flip-flop in a halved pair is still lingering under the kitchen table.  There are two bags of donations waiting to be donated, two boxes of storage items waiting to be stored, and it's all pushed to one side of the hallway.  The baby bassinet is filled with our old comforter...on top of unfolded laundry.

And I begin to not see its misplacement.  I clean around these things; it's odd.  The longer they sit, the less I notice their wrongness. 

That's what it's like.  Living here in a tornado-ravaged city, three weeks after the disaster. 

The flattened horizon has begun to look appropriate.  It is what I expect to see.  That mangled building?  I know it.  That stripped tree?  It's normal.  Those rows of battered, abandoned vehicles?  They are part of the landscape. 

We drive around it.  We see giant debris-removal trucks on every road, and we wait for them to move; they are anticipated.  We nod our heads at volunteers and relief workers; they might not live here, but they belong. 

Our eyes get used to what we are experiencing, even as our hearts ache.  The world evolves around us, even as our souls cling to the past.  It is protection, no longer being startled or terrified by the city's appearance.  It is grace, no longer feeling like the air has left my lungs.

It is life.  It will be beautiful again, but for now I'm comforted in knowing that my eyes, at least, won't have to remain shuttered in order to function in this town.  I can see it.  I can accept it.

Because it will be put back together again, just like I'll eventually move the boxes of storage and the wadded up towels.  The scope of one is so much larger than the other, but they both function the same way in my mind:

This, too, shall pass. 

We're seeing the Bigger Picture through simple moments -- moments that force us to stop and take notice of the ways our worlds are important, meaningful, and beautiful. Please join us at Alita's place today! Grab the button, link up and then go forth to encourage the two people before you as they walk this journey of intentional living.