Keeping an eye out
I have always wanted blue contact lenses – really blue…knock-your-socks-off blue. Well not always just blue. For a long time I wanted one blue and one slightly turquoise so that when people looked at me, they would not know what they were seeing, they’d just know something was different, that I had a “unique quality.” My eye doctor (also in a Sunday morning Bible class I was leading) said, “You want THAT to be what people think is unique about you?”
Yes. I was {am??} that shallow.
The weak-eyed one.
Once my mom started using color film exclusively in the early 60s and beyond, I was always the one with red eyes. Then as a young teen, every. single. picture. caught me with my eyes closed. I think it was backlash about hearing my poor mom bemoan the red eyes, or “weak eyes” as they were sometimes explained. I was just trying to spare 2 red dots from ruining otherwise good pictures. She did not like those either. Nevertheless, almost every photo between 1972 and 1978 were with my eyes wide shut!
I felt a great connection to and affinity for Leah, the weak-eyed one in the Bible.*
Enter Ellie.
Months ago Ellie mentioned wanting to take my picture. I resisted with every imaginable excuse (the hair fiasco, the knee – you name it), but alas, finally, I ran out. Do you know what she said to me a couple of weeks ago? She said, “So many people love you and think you are beautiful. I just want to capture what they see.” Really?, I thought. How can you resist that?
And what did she capture, what did she bring me exactly, but my very own deep-heart’s desire? Blue, blue eyes, opened appropriately. So pretty. And though I bear in my body “the [brand] marks of the Lord Jesus [the wounds, scars and other outward evidence of persecutions–these testify to His ownership of me!] (Galatians 6.17 Amplified), though heartbreak has caused lines on my face and etched creases caused by grimace near the corners of my eyes for the things that have sent a deep reverberating ache throughout, though I carry the weight of things left unresolved for far too long and walk with the limp that wrestling with the Angel of the Lord and my very faith causes, and even though I have abused myself in overwork, performance orientation and unyielded anxieties and caused actual deterioration of my health and well-being as the Lord Himself relentlessly pursues and loves me and calls me His own, He still sees the me He created me to be, the one He knitted in the secret place. He sees past the war-wounds and the scar-tissue I could have avoided, and sees? me.
El Roi – You are the God who sees…
*“Then [Jacob] gave them these instructions: ‘I am about to be gathered to my people. Bury me with my fathers in the cave in the field of Ephron the Hittite, the cave in the field of Machpelah, near Mamre in Canaan, which Abraham bought as a burial place from Ephron the Hittite, along with the field. There Abraham and his wife Sarah were buried, there Isaac and his wife Rebekah were buried, and there I buried Leah.’ … When Jacob had finished giving instructions to his sons, he drew his feet up into the bed, breathed his last and was gathered to his people. Gen. 49.28-33 NIV*
Somehow, in the end, Leah won her heart’s desire and was redeemed from the curse. Jacob asks to be buried there, where he buried his wife, Leah.
www.lilacphotography.com Ellie is amazing. She sees things, too. She sees them very beautifully. Thank-you, Ellie.