This week I am far away from my home in Michigan, visiting my parents and sisters in Montana, a birthday surprise for my mom. Parts of this trip have been like well-directed and focused binoculars, bringing into clarity the shapes and colors of my life. During this trip, I notice three different heart-lenses that have made parts of my life pop out of their sometimes fuzzy and unfocused daily routine.

The lens of DISTANCE

Looking at my life from afar lets me see it more clearly. I find that being in new places is tremendously helpful for perspective. I see differently, more clearly, just as when finally getting those binoculars to focus on a far-away bird.

My favorite place for away-from-home reflection is the window seat of an airplane. I never tire of gazing at majestic clouds, patchwork farms, and roads cutting through mountains. Seeing these huge things somehow brings shaper clarity to the small. My mind drifts to my home, husband, children, and the preciousness of our life together. Last week, I may have longed for some time by myself, but as I experience the small and large adventures of this trip, I find myself longing to share the details of life with my children. Relationship becomes the most important thing in my life again. When I am apart from my children I am filled with acute desire to be with them, to live with them fully, not distracted by the dozens of other things buzzing in my mind.

This perspective-giving focus happens profoundly on a plane and when nestled in a mountain valley 2,000 miles away from home. But it can also come when I stare out the window at the coffee shop down the street, or even at home in the quiet of early morning or late night. It just takes a little time and a little distance to focus the lens.

I remember how profoundly adoption can also give this focus. We go to many new places – physically and emotionally – to adopt children and advocate for the fatherless. Entering these new worlds helps us live more fully and passionately when we return.

The lens of ILLNESS.

A shadow of cancer hangs over this family reunion. It’s not talked of much, but adds bittersweetness to our time together. It seems to me that there is a thin line separating our laughter from tears. Eating, drinking, talking, playing – all are colored by the presence of illness that brings awareness of death and the separation it brings. This is another re-focusing lens.

I have a friend whose sister was diagnosed with cancer before the holidays. She says it has altered her usual holiday stressors, centering her on what she always knew was most important, releasing her hold on lesser details. My dad’s cancer can do the same, for all of us as we gather here, and for me as I go back to caring for my children at home.

There are other kinds of vulnerability like this, including all stages of an adoption. As with drastic illness, adoption can make us realize our helplessness to bring about what we most desire. Adoption casts us on God and sharpens our longing for relationship. Those parts of our lives that feel most sad and vulnerable can focus our hearts on what is most important and keep us from getting swallowed up by trivial details.

The lens of NEW YEAR’S EVE.

The turning of the year invites us to reflect. John Piper says that he spends his New Year’s Eve imagining what people would say at his funeral, if he had died the previous year. This may seem morbid, but is actually an opportunity to focus on life. What do you want to be most remembered for? What do you want to leave behind? What do you want the essence of your life to be? What do you want to do before you die?

It is good to remember the shortness of life. It is good to remember that years start and end and cannot be lived again.

Let’s not wait to get started on what we long to do – including expending our resources the very best that we can on behalf of vulnerable and broken children. It’s not that new years and reminders of the shortness of life should push us guiltily into things we don’t really feel like doing. It’s that they make clear what we may have forgotten in the press of life and the myriad of media that surround us.

I am glad to have these three lenses as reminders as I return home and enter into the busy bustle of January.

Whether life is swirling around us or offering pockets of quiet, whether tumultuous or peaceful, the Lord is giving us opportunities to focus.

He invites us to use the heart-binoculars that he graciously puts in our hands.

This Month, Archives

• December 2006, Christmas Wonder and Your Adopted Child
  
  
• November 2006, Do you love them as much?
  
  
• October 2006, Treasured Possession
  
  

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