It's 2015, and I'm listening to dubstep today, wearing skinny jeans and leggings and straightening my hair. And I wear makeup. And I hardly exercise these days (shame on me!). And I have two kids. And I am a computer scientist. And I've been married almost 9 years. I have money in the bank and the house and cars paid off.
If you had told my 2005 self that ten years from then this would be my life, I would have been surprised to say the least. I think I'd be pleasantly surprised, truthfully, but 10 years ago right NOW, I didn't even know Mark. I met him on April 17, 2005.
Ten years ago, I had just started my new job at Raven Industries. I had graduated college in December and took an entire month off from life. No job, no obligations, nothing really going on. I had moved back to the farm with zero plans. I had about $50 to my name, $41K in student loans and $12K in credit card debt. My life as it is now seemed a long, long ways off.
Sometimes it's hard to keep life in perspective. Some days, when work is hard and leaves me drained, and then I come home to kids who refuse to eat more than nibbles and milk that night for whatever reason (and then continue to complain about being hungry all night) and then spend two(!) hours getting them to go to bed (for goodness sakes!) and I get practically no time to myself...sometimes that seems so hard and overwhelming. Without perspective...getting caught up in the details without keeping the big picture in mind...I'd be sinking.
Last Autumn, I took the following two pictures mere seconds apart. The first, I was just walking along and having one of those days where Mark wasn't in the field and I was out for a walk...by myself. Even while I took these pictures, I thought to myself, "Wow...what a huge difference the perspective makes." The second picture, I simply kneeled down and put my phone near the ground and pointed it up slightly.
Now, if you had told me three years ago that I'd have FOUR kids and be driving back and forth to Mayo Clinic to have brain scans done on my husband who suffers from Frontotemporal Dementia, I would probably have tried to change things up. We might have settled with just our two big kids and therefore missed out on the enormous blessings that Ryan and Kinsley have been in our lives. There is no way to prepare yourself for the changes that the Lord has planned for your life, and he provides blessings in the most crazy circumstances. My life right now is so completely far away from anything I could have envisioned for my life. Three years ago, I was feeling so blessed that I had no idea how on earth the Lord could have blessed us even more. Our two boys were at SUCH fun ages, and we were really in the prime of our lives! The crazy part about all that is that even in the midst of where we are now, I still really do feel that way.
There have been so many tears over the past year that they could fill oceans, but there have also been high points of euphoria that I couldn't even begin to explain if I tried. The point is: It's all about your perspective. In all of this life, I could chose to focus on each individual detail and be elated or crushed by them, and I have to say that it really is important to be in each moment and feel each feeling. However, if you stop there and don't look deeper and further for what the Lord is doing in those moments, you're missing the whole point of it all. Without changing our perspective from time to time (lowering the camera to eye-level, so to say), we miss it all. Sometimes that big picture is terrifying and scary, and we have to chose to change our perspective and perhaps focus on just the little things today and find beauty in them. However, sometimes the details seem so bland and boring that you need to put them in their place to see how they all fit together. To not just survive, but thrive, it's important to step back sometimes and see where the Lord is carrying you.
My point is that sometimes we need to focus on the details, and sometimes we need to focus on the big picture: Maintaining one perspective can be a very damaging thing, and so sometimes, when we don't understand why the Lord is having us focus on the beauty of a single snowflake in the midst of a raging blizzard, sometimes that focus is what brings us through the storm unscathed. However, sometimes we're the driver in the midst of the storm, and focusing on that snowflake would put us in the path of destruction, and we need to focus on the big picture to get where we need to go.
Three years ago, we were just coming to this point where we decided that maybe it was okay to stay put instead of splurge on the fancy home for our family of three. We had been through disappointment after disappointment after disappointment in the housing market spanning about 7 years, and we just sorta gave up. In those moments of disappointment, we were so frustrated that God kept saying "no", but now we see so very, very clearly why he did. Had we not listened intently in those days and gave in, going above what we felt God was leading us to bid on the homes. The Holy Spirit laid on my heart time and time and time again that we should never live beyond our means, and to be content: Now I see why.
I have no idea what will lie ahead; there is no doubt about that. However, I can rest assured that no matter where the Lord leads us, He will be there, and He alone can lift us up. That assurance makes even these dark days radiate peace and calm and joy and brightness.
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