Blinded

What is it that you want?  I mean, really want?  A car?  Chocolate?  Money?  To find your ever after? To be a famous somebody? To cure something?  To save someone?  What do you want?

But why?  Why do you want those things?  Why do we want what we want?  What is at the heart of all our yearnings, our longings, our deep wantings? 

It’s our chase for happiness.  It is essentially at the heart of everything we do.  I want chocolate because for the one minute that it melts on my tongue I’m satisfied, I breathe out delight, I’m happy.  I want a car because it makes life easier.  Life easier makes me happier.  I help someone because it makes him/her happy, and because I make him/her happy, my heart smiles and I’m happy.  I want money because, I mean, well who doesn’t?   So what is happiness?  Why do we long for it, sell ourselves to gain it, if only for a fleeting moment?

What is it that you don’t want? What are you fears?  What do you wish will never happen to you?  Or wish never did happen?  Spiders, car accidents, suicide, murder, death of a loved one, abandoned by a parent, sickness, loneliness, depression, anorexia, self-hatred, living but unloved?  Pain.  In the simplest and the most grotesque forms, we are terrified of pain.  In fact, we spend most of our lives obsessed with avoiding pain.  We burry the pain.  We numb the pain.  And we call that life?

In numbing the pain, we dull the life out of living.  What is there left?  The numbing dulls us, so our void is even bigger, deeper.  But wasn’t that supposed to lead to happiness?  We want more.  We crave more.  Never satisfied.   And we become addicted.  Yes, addicted.  Drugs, alcohol, sex—those are the most visibly destructive, but we all have addictions.  We are addicted to whatever dulls the pain, minimizes the ache, kills the thoughts in our heads.  So we can be happy.  But it’s just that—the dulling, the avoiding, this pursuit of happiness that eventually kills us—the lives we are meant to live.  No second-grader ever says, “When I grow up, I want to be a drug addict,” or “I want to be a drunk driver,” or “I want men to want me, and I will do whatever it takes.”   No, when we are young we have hope, we know what happiness is because we are fearless, until we are taught to be afraid.   It was my mom who told me to come home from the park before it got dark because she was afraid, not me.  It was my dad who told me to wear a helmet when riding the bike because he was worried, not me.  At that age we can dream, we can become anything.  And we are happy without having to dig for it or numb the pain that divides it.  It’s no wonder that Jesus says the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as children.  

Did you ever wonder how your life might be different if you accepted pain as a requirement of life?  C.S. Lewis said, “If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it’s not so bad.” 

If you want happiness, start by accepting the pain.  Feel it.  Live it.  Overcome it. Face your fears and that face in the mirror that sometimes disgusts you.  Don’t numb, don’t avoid, don’t bury.  Lift up your eyes and look.  See.  Look at the world for what it is: pain, separation, sin.  And see how you can transform it.  You don’t need to change it to transform it.  You simply need to see—to see the beauty amidst the pain, to see the thanksgiving amidst the sorrow.  In her book One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp explains this as a directive to “lean into the ugly and whisper thanks to transfigure it into beauty.”  She continues explaining the paradox of the connection of joy to pain, saying, “…they are but two arteries of the one heart that pumps through all those who don’t numb themselves to really living.”  Furthermore, Voskamp explains our model for this is Jesus himself, who—on the night before he was betrayed, captured, murdered—“showed us how to transfigure all things—take the pain that is given, give thanks for it, and transform it into a joy that fulfills all emptiness.”

Ah, joy.  A joy that fills all emptiness.  Could this be true?  Take the pain that is given, give thanks, and transform it?  Can a simple utterance of thanksgiving transform something ugly into something beautiful?  See how this transformed Ann Voskamp’s life in her book One Thousand Gifts, and take the dare to do the same.  Indeed, my life, too is being transformed when I whisper thanks over this sometimes- busily-soured life.    

Whispers of gratitude:

·         This pen with a child’s teeth marks – evidence of a shared (or stolen) moment with my ink

·         The wobbly, wooden, worn bench that somehow still invites unity when we sit together watching the sun go to bed

·         Water dripping from freshly hand-washed clothes hanging on the line

·         Lucia’s afro, making her look like a mad scientist

·         When Bongekile smiles

·         Benny’s belly shirts because Gogo insists on feeding him too much on purpose

·         The way peanut butter glistens when it’s melted just right on a piece of toast

·         The pumpkin spice candle from my friend that melts the nerves after chasing and killing a cockroach

·         Ah, yes, sleeping children

·         The single, small stained-glass window in the small chapel that casts a beautiful red streak of love on the wall

·         A woman in bare feet, immersed in her bible during adoration

·         When my old students still contact me and especially when they ask for advice

·         When Angel, Miss Tom Boy Who Never Shows Affection, fights for my hand and hangs onto it all the way through town

·         When I hear noises in the front yard, thinking Benny escaped to the outdoors, but I find out it’s a cow on the loose enjoying our lush grass.

·         Rice and beans – no matter how many times a week I eat the same thing, I can still enjoy them

·         Words – oh how I love words! Hearing them, reading them, and most especially writing them

·         When Lucia draws pictures of me, even though I look like a multi-eyed, harry monster -- at least she got my shoes right!

So, when life around me is usually a blinding chaos, how splendid it becomes when I see!  Even amidst my complaints, my groans, my doubts, my “why me?”, and my fears the  beauty of God still surrounds me—every day, every minute, every second—as he keeps whispering, “My amazing grace is enough for you, if only you will take time to see.” 

Join me in asking God for eyes to see. 

“The art of deep seeing makes gratitude possible.  And it is the art of gratitude that makes joy possible.  Isn’t joy the art of God?” – Ann Voskamp

 

Hair, eyes, nose, cheeks, and shoes!  -A 3 year old's drawing of me

Lucia's fro after waking up