http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_seeing#Overcoming_atmospheric_seeing
This was an interesting thought to me. I'd had a conversation just the day before with one of my daughters about how we see things, and how often the view gets distorted.
I remembered a conversation with a friend at church earlier in the morning. Last weekend my daughter and I had demonstrated some stir fry recipes and technique that we use in our kitchen at home. I was very frustrated and unhappy with myself that morning. I forgot the cord for the wok (thankfully my mom was there to run home and get it), felt that I didn't speak enough and what did come out was dumb, everyone was bored, made too much food, the recipes I'd sent were in notepad instead of word so most of them were cut off, basically wasted the morning of the hostess, coordinator, and everyone who'd attended. I was so embarrassed I by the time we were done I wanted to cry. My daughter Tina, demonstrating with me, was loving and encouraging, telling me everyone was laughing and seemed to be having a good time. My mom and best friend/sister were also, telling me that I had done a good job of showing the flexibility and ease, and that I wasn't different than any other demonstrator of other topics. I thought that since they love me, they were just looking for positives.
Move forward a few days. I see a friend's post on facebook that they've mastered sweet and sour sauce. Then my daughter showed me a message she got from someone who was there, stating that they'd made a recipe and used it in a supper and they loved it and saying thank you. Wow, thinks me. That's cool. She took something we did and used it in something she wanted. One of my lofty goals ... and it happened! Then my daughter and I got a card from the lady who coordinates these demonstration classes saying sweet and happy things. That was nice of her, I think to myself, considering I was such a dork.
PAY ATTENTION, says God.
Skip a few more days (and, I am sure, a few tiresome-for-others conversationS about it) to Sunday. It was one of those wonderful mornings where God says "I love you" every time you turn around. A friend was there right when I needed an ear and encouragement. Another someone special to me with hugs and loving words. Songs in church I love to sing. Hot coffee. No struggle about what songs to lead in the classrooms. Joy in Sunday School music. Time to visit with friends afterward. Another friend who had been there that awful Saturday morning sat down to say thank you, and tell me how much she'd enjoyed it, how much information she'd taken away, questions that she'd found answers to.
I started thinking about that morning. I knew most of the ladies there, and they are acquainted with my scatterbrained method of communicating. Everything I made was easy to plan, easy to make, easy to eat. The fact that I accidentally made the stir fry as beef instead of chicken demonstrated my point about being able to use anything in the recipes and change them to suit your mood. The fact that I forgot to add the chicken into the chicken lo mein until someone asked me "when do you use the chicken?" demonstrated how easy and forgiving these recipes are. Another person didn't realize that you could buy a certain stir fry sauce without preservatives. We told her where we got it.
I started to look at what I had been telling myself the past few days. Why had I done this in the first place? I was looking for another way to be involved and connect with my friends. I wanted to do something to encourage my daughter's talents. I wanted to try something I hadn't done before. And then God sent me this chance to try something new that answered all of those "I wants."
Instead of looking at it through the clarity of the love of Christ and my church family and my own family, I was holding up my jar of water and using the distorted view to beat myself up with it. I wasn't listening and believing the people around me because I was too busy nitpicking what I didn't do. Making my own atmospheric interference.
Whoops.
Recently I told one of my daughters that it's important to believe the people who love you when they tell you good things. When they point out the positives. When they smile and encourage you. That they have a different point of view than we often do of ourselves, and that theirs is often the truthful one.
Ouch, smack with the God stick, as Kellie and I sometimes say.
PAY ATTENTION. I LOVE YOU. ~God
