I am incredibly excited to add a new Blogger to my rotation. I met Shelby Mathis while our husbands were stationed together in the Azores, and she has also come and worked on our farm! She will be posting on Mondays!
I got an updated eyeglasses prescription recently, and I finally got new glasses yesterday. I tried the frames on in a Warby Parker store last month, and then did a "Try On At Home" by mail because I wanted to be sure they were "the ones". I live in glasses, so frames become part of my face. People get used to seeing them on me, and when I don't have them on, they know something's different and maybe they can't even put a finger on what's different, but they know it's something.
I unboxed my new frames and put them on. I was instantly dizzy. I suffer from pretty persistent vertigo anyway, but this was truly disorienting. My left eye felt a little wandery. I could see the backs of the frames themselves since these are smaller than my old ones, and having that in my vision was uncomfortable. I peeked at the prescription wondering if they'd gotten it wrong. They hadn't. I've worn glasses since 6th grade, but I forget every single time there's an adjustment period. Like with anything new.
To adopt a new perspective is difficult. We like comfort and security and predictability. We don't like to be challenged if we can't be sure, in the end, it will be for our benefit. It's uncomfortable to put on new lenses.
My journey of putting on new lenses has been hard as well as transformative. It's hard to keep the new lenses on when they start to make you dizzy and you know you won't get to walk about your day with the ease you did before.
Travel has given me new perspectives and points of view. Much of my angle for life and writing and the way my family lives is due to having put those lenses on. I've seen parts of the world I never dreamed I needed to go. I've eaten food that gives me a real distaste for the typical American diet. I've climbed the highest mountain in Portugal, and it's now my baseline for how much I can psychically handle. I've seen walls erected where they weren't supposed to be. I've seen the remnants of walls that fell and never should've been built in the first place. I've learned tiny parts of other languages and am fascinated and humbled each time I'm confronted with my own biases about someone's inability to speak English, and my own inability to have a conversation in any other language. I leave a place different than I arrived. My home or hometown can stay the same, and as long as I'm still traveling, my prescription will keep on changing. These are glasses I don't take off.
Travel gave me new lenses.
My faith and relationship with our Creator has given me eyes to see the world the way He see it: fallen, but full of wonder and hope and people worth saving. I can cross state lines and country borders to places unfamiliar and leave with a script that confirms: I've been there and I've met her people, and they're worth it. They're worth knowing. Especially the ones who are hurting and suffering and forgotten about. And of course the ones not like me. My faith has given me eyes to view suffering as a fire that can refine us rather than melt us down. That there can be purpose in all we do and experience because it is all used for our good. My faith has shown me how little I need to care about the opinions of other people. I report to only One. And sometimes that can cost comfort, relationships, or even life. But my belief is that these glasses are worth it. They were freely given to me, I just have to keep them on.
Faith gave me new lenses.
_______
Going where you've never been -- outside of your comfort zone -- to new places and people, can be uncomfortable and disorienting. When it gets hard, you'll want to retreat back to before. Back to when it didn't hurt so badly. Back to where you had clear vision and a sure framework and certainty. Back where you had an argument for this, a map for that. But in the split first second you focus your eyes through those new lenses -- whether you've decided to keep them on or not -- you know you see more clearly. You know you've witnessed something you can't unsee. You simply have to find enough courage and curiosity to keep them on to get past the swirling newness.
Keep the lenses of new places and faces on long enough and you'll forget you even have them on. Other people will even forget what you look like without them. The way you see things isn't as before, and eventually what was before will appear blurry and outside the frame. Sometimes you'll catch a glimpse of a sliver of the old -- just past the edge of the frame -- out of the corner of your eye. It's dizzying to see both at once when the old is fainting into indistinguishable haze and the new lens is filled with new, unfamiliar, and hard. I think it's best to acknowledge the old and embrace the new to avoid the commotion of staring in the wrong direction.
_________
I shouldn't have assumed the lenses I have on are the wrong prescription. My optometrist and Warby Parker know what they're doing. It's me that needs changing. It's me that could use some help seeing the world more clearly. I am the one that has to adjust to this new perspective and persevere through the discomfort.
Just like I had to when I started traveling the globe to countries I wasn't sure were safe (the topic of "safety" is a whole 'nother post.)
Just like I had to when I decided to risk all I thought and knew to follow Jesus.
Just like I have to when I meet people who think, look, vote, believe, or love differently than I do.
Just like I have to when life changes direction at the drop of a hat, and I'm along for the ride.
So, let's be brave enough to put on new lenses. Let's be courageous enough to go places we've never been, and unpack for long enough for the place to change us. Let's be humble enough to believe we have more in common with strangers than we have different, and get to know them well enough we understand their perspective and can borrow their lenses. Let's be curious enough to leave our safe little comfort zones, and stay out of them for so long our zones are stretched beyond former recognition.
We go knowing there will be adjustment at first. It will likely be dizzying as you try to focus on what you used to see while looking through new lenses. It may even wreck ideas and convictions you've held so dear, and that process will likely be tough.
But it may even fling open doors to love and a world you didn't know existed. You'll see.
On belay,
Shelby
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