Sight

If you're going to know me, then you need to know this: I am a Christian and Bryan is not. We have many of the same loves, many of the same opinions, many of the same values. But we do not have the same sight. And this can be hard, on both sides. It is hard to move together sometimes when you see the path so differently.

C.S. Lewis said, "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." I see life through the lens of my faith. I can't help it; there is no other way for me to see. It's not that I just try to fit everything into some religious schema, although I admit that I will resort to that if I feel forced to explain or defend something that would appear to challenge my faith-- but this speaks to my lack of articulation or faith or both, and I digress. It is simply a matter of sight: "I once was blind but now I see." And ever since I saw, nothing has looked the same.

So when Bryan asked me a while ago if my next post was "going to be religious again," I had to think if there was any way it might not be. And here's what I came to: I might not always write about God or faith or grace, but God or faith or grace is always going to be in my writing. They might not be in the words, but they'll be behind them or underneath them. Maybe sometimes my writing will be blatantly religious and maybe sometimes you won't even so much as catch a whiff, but it will be there because it is everywhere I am, see it or not.

My pastor, Rob, said in a sermon recently that "there is something about seeing Jesus that changes us." I think that people who haven't experienced this take it to mean we Christians are a bunch of holier-than-thou assholes, and trust me, we can be. Because seeing Jesus doesn't make us perfect; it just makes us safe not to be. But when we see him-- when we see who he really is and what he's really done (and I don't just mean an intellectual acceptance of doctrine; I mean an actual turning of the soul) --it does change us. It gives us a whole new way of seeing things, of seeing life, because we don't just see with our own screwed up hearts anymore; we also see with faith.

I think this means that we see with a little more hope than we might have otherwise. Bryan found this great song that has a line, "just prayed to a god that I don't believe in." When I asked him what he thought that meant, he said, "desperation."

As I drove one of our 11-month old twins to the ER a couple weeks ago, I was an absolute wreck, screaming the whole way, tears spattering my sunglasses. I begged God over and over to give her breath, to heal her tiny lungs. And when I had time to think about it later, I thought what a poor show of faith that had been, how a person of bigger faith wouldn't have begged; she would have just prayed and trusted. But as my friend Becca pointed out, at least I went to the right person. And that tiny faith was at least faith enough not to have total desperation. I prayed to a God that I do believe in.

Any mom would have made the drive screaming; but at least a mom who has seen Jesus knows there is someone to hear her screams. And that is pretty much the way everything in my life goes: it goes the same exact way as it would have without faith, but it's held together and propelled forward by something bigger and sturdier than itself.

My neighbor Barbara says that we all see with different eyes. I can only write, as I can only do anything else that I do, with the sight that I have. Your sight may be different from mine, as I know my Bryan's is, and if it is and you're still reading, then I am all the more grateful.