Welcome back. You belong here.

They say you should always have a focus when you write. Well, I’m not sure I have a focus for this entry, but I guess if I did, it’d be blindness.

I’m not blind, nor going blind, but sometimes it feels like I can’t see the road ahead.

There have been many great things in our lives lately – jobs, opportunities, amazing people. For example yesterday I was coming home from a meeting with the leadership of our church, and felt inspired, filled with dreams and possibilities, thankful because even though we’re small, our dreams and hopes are huge.

But then I got home and have felt sick all day, headaches, tired, exhausted, just weary. I’ve been pushing pretty hard the last two months and I’m hitting a bit of a wall.

Sometimes I push for fear of not being accepted or liked. Other times it’s just my personality, I’m a doer and an achiever and I don’t like sitting still when important things need to get done. But the reality is that my tank is mostly filled by people, music, by meditating, resting and doing things I love such as being alone or playing music. That fuels me to do great things.

But blindness comes when I don’t do those things. And when I lose my vision, it gets me down, it makes me focus on the hard things in life, versus how those hard things are actually a path towards something great.

But other times I see and it makes me glad. Again, after yesterday’s leadership meeting, I came home filled with perspective, connecting things in my life, in awe of how God is weaving together things, guiding me, being with me amidst so much change.

Do you see the signs? Can you see things clearly right now? Are you able to see with your eyes closed?

Sickness is often a sign to slow down, to rest, to take time for yourself, all things I don’t like to do. I also think that sickness can be a time to see things better. To realize how “fragile we are”, that we “are but dust”, to be loved by others, to not always give, but to receive. Again, all things I don’t do very well.

Sometimes when I close me eyes, I see the reflection of the sun outside my window, I hear the sounds of our son playing Legos on the floor, I feel my body letting down, I hear my heart beating.

Not seeing is normally seen as a bad thing, after all, who would want to be blind for even an hour? But I thank God that during those times when my eyes are blind, the reflections, sounds and people around me remind me that to be blind can actually be a time to see things even more clearly.