Having a Heart Like His: I Once Was Blind

What if you couldn't see color but thought you could?

If you lived in a world full of something rich and deep and beautiful, but somehow you couldn't grasp it. You couldn't curl your fingers around it. It seeped through. Fell.

But you didn't know. You thought you still held it in your palm, and you squeezed tight. Yet it was all gone.

Because you couldn't see the color. You lived in a world surrounded by beauty, but you forgot to look up and see it. Your eyes were glued to the ground, but you didn't really see that either.

Or maybe it's just me.

Sometimes, I can't see color.

When I wrote The Torch Keepers, I had a fun challenge. With a blind character, Nura, I had to learn to describe, through other characters, what the world looked like in words to someone who never saw it before.

I imagined how colors felt. How would one describe the texture and depth and look of a rose to someone who never saw it? How can you describe a sunset in a few words?

But since then, I've become blind. Not blind in a literal sense, but I lost the awe-struck expression of examining the beauty around me.

Sometimes I live like the world is black and white.

I can live a whole day and never stop and just study. Study the deep richness of a sunset or the gentle calmness of autumn leaves. Study the way the stars are like gems in an endless sky, the moon adoring them with silver delight. Study the beauty in someone's face, in the words they speak, in a silent look between us.

Or it could go beyond color. It could go to sound. And smell. And taste. And touch. And a million others we can't even describe.

There's this indescribable goodness of God all around us, and we can't even grasp it all, so somehow we forget and miss the point and become so busy with life that we lose it all.

But that's Life:

Savoring Jesus. Savoring His goodness and the beauty He gave us. Those million gifts.

Sometimes I forget to open my eyes. I live like it's night, even in day.

And the reason: I'm not looking up.

I've been focused on me, even when I think it's Jesus I'm looking for. I see how much I fail Him. How weak I am. How I can't seem to muster up joy and peace and grace and so much more.

I'm learning. To look up.

To embrace it. To embrace Jesus and have Him be my all.

To surrender.

And that's when I see color. I see a blue, deeper than ever before. An orange, trickled among the marigolds in our garden haven. A mix of red-brown in trees tinged with fall's embrace.

I have to stop and just see with His eyes. See the priceless faces of people around me. See the color and savor it and smile no matter what life holds. Because Jesus is good.

Color. Beauty. Life.

Not even because of what I see, but because of Jesus opening my eyes to it all. The beauty is Him. It's a gift, and every good gift comes from above.

He is beautiful.

And I love Him.

That's why I once was blind, but now I see.

You can too. You can be still and know that He is God. He will be exalted in the earth; and we worship.

For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.