Perspective

In this last week, my neighborhood has exploded with a veritable number of Bradford Pear Tree flowers. It appears, either by design or by accident, that there are literally 100’s of these trees within a 5 block radius of where I live. With this time of year, we’ve had the gales of March blow through with their signature good winds and rain. This morning, the greenways and walkways were covered, no exaggeration, with millions of petals that had fallen off the trees to the ground creating a pastel colored carpet to walk on. The shades of pink and white were just amazing, and it was something to behold, as I set out on my morning walk today.

Perspective changes the definition of what we call ‘broken roads’. Most of us start off with a bright eyed future, full of what we want to be or do, but somehow, before you know it, we are 30, 40, 50 or more years down the road, looking back and wondering how we ended up in this corner.

As I was walking over my carpet of pear blossoms, smelling spring time knocking on our door, I stopped to think about the perspective of the flower blossoms on the ground. From my 5’11” (or so) from the ground, it is clear what they are. I started playing a little game I used to play when I was a kid. ‘What do things look like from up in the air?’ So, if I were a bird in the top of a tree, would I see the white and pink on the ground as flower blossoms or what? If I couldn’t, then maybe through deduction or context I might know. But lets go 500 feet up. What would I see? … green grass, pavement, sidewalks, the tops of houses and a coloration on the ground that I might not recognize. Again, maybe with training I could deduce what is going on, but maybe not.

If we were at 10,000 feet I am not sure we would know or even see the difference, and the higher you go, the more details are lost. Conversely, the higher you go the subject changes and is ‘bigger’. As I played my game it was easy to think that this absolutely silent and divine painted beauty I was standing on couldn’t be seen at all from 40,000 feet! It is so magnificent at the ground level, but so hard to believe that you can’t see it not that many feet away. How often have you felt like that … that your life doesn’t matter, and it is lost in the fog of busyness, or with all else going on around us, you don’t matter or have a place? We’ve all had that feeling, but take heart in perspective.

The broken road you think you are on might not be broken at all. Perspective… The corner you feel stuck in might not be a corner at all. Perspective… The times and seasons that feel like they were lost might not be at all. It all fits as it should. Call it the most complicated mathematical equation, or call it magic… the divine spark that started us all, or whatever… it works. The higher you go the more you see. We each see our own broken roads. Others might not see those broken roads at all. We might feel the road is broken, and that we are hopelessly lost.

I am not sure I believe that anymore. I think you fit right in, and though it might not make sense in ‘our’ idea of sense, I think everything does fit in. To state it directly – The color, fabric, texture and true meaning of your life is woven together to make a whole, and that whole is a more magnificent image than you can ever imagine. When you are in the trenches and the bombs of life are going off back to back it is hard to know and understand this. But never the less, it is true.

On this journey we are all on, we each find the road from time to time broken, uneven and not on a map. Never fear dear ones. Your road leads where it is supposed to. One of my all time favorite authors, C.S Lewis, once wrote, “Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.” I don’t know what that means in your life, but I take away that having perspective in a situation is key to continuing to move forward. It is easy to pull off the road and stop. I say, as long as you have breath, keep walking… your path will unfold one step at a time.

Safe journeys this week.