Rose colored glasses

"Try these glasses on, everything is so bright and alive," he says to me on the way out of town.

"No, I like mine," I don't like rose colored glasses, it's not realistic, it feels unnatural."  Always the realist, sometimes the idealist, and once in a while I venture into the closet to be the optimist.

"Just wear them for a while, trust me, you'll love them."

So we trade glasses, he puts on my dark glasses with the metallic hot pink frames and I his rose amber framed glasses with the rose lens.

"I don't like them they are too bright."

"Just leave them on for a while."

I ride in silence and get used to the world through the rose glasses.  I ride along happily in my own thoughts trying to count the blessings of the moment as I listen to kids conversations and watch the world fly by. I feel happy, I see my blessings and they are many.  We stop to get gas and I quickly hand him back his glasses so that he doesn't have to be the big man pumping gas with girly hot pink glasses.

The air escapes from me as I put on my own glasses, "ugh!"

"I told you, you'd like em."

We ride in silence again listening to the kids chatter and the news radio, but this time I struggle to see what was so clear a moment ago.  I once again get used to my glasses, I ride content, but I forget to keep counting my gifts, I forget what the world looked like through the rose colored glasses.  The daft are so easily distracted.  I would have to do battle to see again, the boys snippy to the girl, the boys snippy to a mama, the mama wanting to plug her ears from the barrage of questions from the girl. I would see the gifts, but I wouldn't cover everything with thankfulness and the flesh would struggle and I would strangle on guilt.

Days later I would ask HIM why? Why all the struggle? When would I learn to see and believe. I would remember the glasses, the rose ones that changed the way I saw the world, and HE would say "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. "He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!"

He would take the ordinary and with the blanket of thankfulness transform it to extraordinary. Just like when he said, "But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.  Simple, always so simple in context, harder to implement in a life that feels comfortable in her own glasses.  It doesn't seem possible to really live like that, the realist once again confronts me.  Who can really live like that with rose glasses on all the time? I hear myself say that maybe the only ones that have ever really lived are those with glasses and that HE made a way for all to really see and live.

I know that waves will toss me. I will lose rose glasses, I will prefer the old ones but only for a time, a short time.  What was once a hazy image in my mind of true joy is coming into focus.  I am beginning to see.  Thank God for eyes of the soul!  I know what to do when I lose my way and I know where there are a limitless supply of rose colored glasses.