See: The birth of hope and other things

My eyesight often seems to improve this time of year.  At the beginning, when the year is fresh and I'm standing straddling two seasons - the year behind, the year before - and what is "old" becomes what is "new" as my eyes focus on what I wasn't able to see when I was in the throes of the present. 

I had a hell of at time seeing last year.  It was like driving through a rainstorm with the wipers on high speed and still everything a blur.  And it's amazing, really, how quickly we can move from un-seeing to sight, but here I stand looking back, looking forward, and I think it's been coming on for awhile now.  I just didn't know it.

I see hope.  It's been in gestation all along and only now is it ready for birth, and even then, it will be a newborn, an infant.  A year from now, it may be walking. And I see my struggle with hope, how I wanted it to promise something in my circumstances would change, and then how I fought for it to be a separate entity from the happenings of life.  How I labored to know, really know, hope.  And here I am, preparing to hold it in my arms, against my skin, and watch how I will change with its touch.

I see hope, and it is this: this life is preparation for another.  I am loved fully, unconditionally, eternally, and there is no circumstance, no brokenness, no disappointment or failing or loss in life that can rob me of that inheritance.  I am free to love because I am not empty.

And I see love.  All the days and weeks and months of loving out of promise instead of emotion, of falling down and getting back up again, I see that time is my teacher.  When I thought love was not there because for so long I felt anything but love and sometimes confused it with passion, I see it was there in the ground, a seed dying in order to live.  This putting the good of the other in front of my own, of picking up the towel and serving in the tired and the lack.  This looking into the face of the one I say I love and seeing a glimpse of the Divine in his tired eyes, holding the hand that has fit within mine through the last few years and squeezing it tight.  I've got you, it says.  I'm not leaving. We're sticking this out.  This love, I see, is deeper and quieter, wider and stronger than the feelings of love that sweep us along and then dry up or fade into trickle.  This is love that sustains, that perseveres, that redeems and beautifies with age.

Here, I see joy.  I thought I could know joy by sheer willpower and intentional choosing, but to know joy, I first had to know hope.  And with hope, to know love.  And with love that lays down, day in and day out, I see joy bubbling up through the cracks, refreshing and delighting my heart.  

I have a long road ahead of seeing, but this, too, is grand adventure. 



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Joining Lisa-Jo and Five-minute Friday to the prompt of "See."