Clearing the bug guts

I hate when I can't see out my windshield while driving. Often times my sight is impaired by the heavy rains and semis kicking up dirty sprays of water on the freeway, and sometimes, by bug casualties. I remember barreling down the highways five years ago or so with one of my good friends, her Toyota Camry our over-burdened pack mule, carting her belongings from Seattle to Mississippi. The further southeast we drove, the more bugs we collected on her windshield. It must have been only three days into the trip before we could no longer see very clearly between the fine display of bug bodies splattered across the glass. We finally decided to pull over and scrub the windshield before we continued with our trip.

While reading Room of marvels (I highly recommend this book, by the way) yesterday, I paused at this little exchange between characters, feeling strangely that I could have been the character being questioned:

"Let me ask a simple question. Who made your eyes?"

"What? That is something a two-year old would ask?"

"Who made your eyes?"

"God? Is that what you're looking for?"

"Precisely. It was God, and he wants you to use them to see his marvels."

Come to think of it, my eyes can be a lot like that bug-splattered windshield, collecting grime as I cruise along from day to day. They can start off so clean and sparkly, allowing me to see sharply the landscape around me. Within days or weeks or months, they can be cluttered with grime, remnants of ickiness I've picked up along the way that seem to have adhered themselves to the lenses of my eyes. If I don't stop and scrape them off, the build-up is blinding. I can see, but not clearly. Or what I see is not beauty, but bug guts. Not the most life-affirming thing to behold.

My eyes feel so often gunked up. It takes a lot of stops along the highway to keep my windshield clean and clear, but when I tire of the bug guts, I know its time. I'm not seeing his marvels, and I know that's what my eyes are for.