By
Dana Rausch
/ December 28, 2015
Exhausted, I laid down to take a five minute nap yet it turned into a thirty minute nap. Sitting up I couldn’t focus. Things across the room were blurry. Reaching to rub my eyes I came in contact with my glasses. Chagrined realizing I had left them on. Oh my! Now they were tweaked.
Unable to see correctly, I immediately went to visit my optometrist. Pleased to be of service, the receptionist took my glasses and adjusted them. Grateful my glasses were fixed at no charge, I left the office.
Yet, something wasn’t right. My glasses were on and newly adjusted, but I still couldn’t focus well. I began to question: 
· Is it me?
· Is something wrong?
· Are my eyes getting worse?
I went back in the office. Apologizing for bothering her a second time, I explained my dilemma. She then asked if my glasses were bifocals. Confirming they were, she went to adjust them again.
Often, we try to handle situations unaware of circumstances or experiences. Inadvertently we peer through skewed glasses and see things twisted. We look at others and can’t understand why they do what they do or say what they say. We look at things through our personal lens. Adding insult to injury we get upset because they don’t see things our way. For example:
I went to the hospital recently and a woman walked out the front door and bumped into me. She continued walking as if I didn’t exist. I turned and said out loud, “Excuse me!” to her retreating back. Shaking my head at her rudeness, I continued walking in to hear an apology from her family. “Her mother just died.” My view instantly changed.
Or the time I went to the store and impatiently waited in line, becoming more aggravated by the second. Then the customer in front of me started complaining only to the total embarrassment of the young mother trying to pay for her groceries. She had run out of money and had to have the cashier take things off her bill until she was down to the amount of cash in hand.
I was quick to jump on the bandwagon with the other customers waiting. This was ridiculous! Couldn’t she add up her groceries as she was putting them in her cart? Now she was wasting my valuable time. Then it hit me. My outlook was skewed. What am I doing? Why don’t I step up and offer to pay for the items she can’t buy (which were necessities) and help her out?
As that mother thanked me and walked away in tears her little boy kept asking, “Mommy, why are you crying? What’s wrong Mommy?” Once again my view changed.I am asking the Lord to change my focus. Instead of peering through my personal lens of stereotyping, judgment, criticism, or impatience, I want to see differently.
Lord, change my eyes to see like you and my heart to love like yours.