One Piece At A Time

This is the second post in a four part series.

Walking with someone who is dying teaches you many things. You receive the gift of intimate knowledge of them. They often share things then they would never have shared earlier. There is no longer any reason for holding back, keeping up appearances, or pretending. Pride has ebbed away. In the midst of presence with them you will also get glimpses into yourself you had not noticed when you were busy doing other things.

 

I experienced that with Linda when she asked me to be present with her on her way home. Before she had arrived at the “now”, she had already faced so many other things that allowed her to often see both closer and farther. As I share from her final journal, I was reminded of a conversation she had shared about learning how to see. She had just returned from being with her best friend in Tennessee. She wanted to somehow take me to that mountain top to see what the Lord had taught her, see how she was learning to see.

 

She told me she had learned a new way to see. I was fascinated. Here is the way she described it in her final journal:

 

“How do you see? With rose colored glasses? With blinded eyes? Or with filters on? Or do you see with ‘spiritual eyes’? What are ‘spiritual eyes’, you ask? Well, they’re how God sees! You see – He sees the big picture! We see in small frames…just in bits and pieces. God sees the beginning to the end…all at the same time!

 

I’m getting ready to go back to Tennessee. I went there last summer with my best friend. One of the neatest things I learned there last year was how we see in pieces!

 

We sat on top of a mountain looking down into the valley and it was beautiful, but I could only focus on 1 thing at a time! It almost looked like a quilt pieced together, yet I could only ‘see’ one piece at a time! One field, one lake, one yard, one farm! We sat there for hours trying to soak it all in, but even now looking at my snapshots I discover I see the ‘whole’ picture and yet can only see ‘one piece at a time’!

 

Our lives are like that, filled with pieces, things that we see, feel, do – one at a time, yet all of them fit together for God’s perfect plan!

 

The problem is we can’t get past ‘right now’ and it throws us! We get frustrated, upset and even angry ‘cause we don’t see the overall picture! We ‘see’ with rose-colored glasses, blinded eyes, or through filters from our past!

 

We have to learn to see with ‘spiritual eyes’ and that takes time and trust in the One who sees the whole picture!”

 

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12 (KJV)