seeing but not seeing

Have you ever looked at a painting and saw the big picture of the painting but you did not see the little parts that made up the painting?

Have you ever looked at someone's life and saw the whole of their life noticing it looked amazing or normal or a hot mess.  In seeing the whole, did you take the time to see the parts that made up the whole?

With the painting and the life did you take the time to notice?  Did you take the extra time required to actually see what you were looking at?  Did you allow what you saw to touch your heart?  To soften a hardened heart?  Or make you ask need questions?  Or change your perspective?  Or move you to action?

I can be categorized as a "seer of the log and avoider of the speek."  I am good at seeing the log in someone else's life.  I am also good at seeing the log in my life.  Unfortunately, I am also good at avoiding both the log and the speek.

Over the last six months I have been thinking about the life I left.  The consensus of my heart is, I have many regrets.  Over the past few weeks I have been walking through some grief because of this.  I've been trying to process the regrets.  I need to resolve them.  I need to find peace in them.

I was so eager to leave.  The day could not come soon enough.  I wanted out, I wanted out of the life I had allowed to become mine.  My life was good but my heart was dead.

I had a great job.  I had a great home.  I had great friends.  I had an amazing life and I could not see any of it.  I was so eager to make my dead heart alive again that I rushed out of my life.

I saw but did not see.

There were things I desperately wanted but I did not take the time to cultivate them.  I held on to hurts with a tight fists and would not acknowledge when I saw a change in that person.  Jealousy had grown deep roots in my heart and I did not take the time and urgent care to tear it out.

I wanted community.  I craved and was starved for authentic community where I could be me and not fear judgement.  I was desperate to be loved.  

But when these things, the very things I was starving for, presented themselves I pushed back against them and rejected them.  I rejected love.  I pushed back against community.  I ran from a community God was giving me and rejected their love.

You see God gave me what I wanted, what I desired, what I needed and I could not receive it.  I couldn't received any of it because my hands were full of fear, bitterness, jealousy, anger, pain and unbelief.  My hands were too full of lies to hold truth in them.  My heart was too over grown with weeds of death to sew any seeds of life.

I had but did not receive.   I saw but did not see.  I heard but did not perceive.

I missed it.  I missed them.  I missed beauty.  I missed what I was longer for.

And I missed the fact that despite the rejection and push back they, my community, my people, LOVED me still.  They cheered me on.  They prayed for me.  In fact they still are - loving me, cheering me on, praying for me.  I may have missed it but they didn't.  I may have not seen but they did.  I may have not heard but they did.

I would never have made it through the last 4 years of my life without this community God gave me.  I would not have survived.  I would have given up.  I would have been crushed.  I would have lost hope.  And honestly, I may have even lost my faith.

I did not see.

But I see now!  The regrets I have are not because I left.  I don't regret for one moment saying yes to Jesus to go, no I don't.  What I regret is not loving well, not loving my people well.  I regret dismissing hearts that needed tending, pushing away vulnerable lives, rejecting love, and denying changed lives.  I regret not living the life God gave me but instead chasing the future that I thought was better.  I regret not violently tearing out the death that rooted itself in my heart.        

But, I see now.  I see.