I have written on this before...this concept called perspective.  It’s not just the physical circumstances that provide us with a perceived understanding of what is unfolding in our lives, but it includes the body, heart, and mind...the best perspective to be that of on our knees looking up...a posture that is not only physically humbling but one that infects the heart with the same necessary posture.  And when that occurs...our sight is infinitely more clear...and remarkably vivid.  I wrote that post on Perspective in 2011, in a very turbulent time for myself and my family...a time that marked turmoil, hurt, pain, intense stress, deep anxiety...and a time of unquestionable growth...all leading to dramatic change...change that was not possible without the turmoil...etc...

Now,  nearly 3 years later, I still hold to that idea that the best perspective is looking up...so this won’t be a post on how that is any different.  Rather, this would be an addendum to that...an additional train of thought sparked by the events in those three years and the gradual unfolding of what was to be a very new and different season in my life. 

I am sure those of you reading can perhaps remember or if you have children can relate to this...small bodies...little children...are always ‘looking up’...by necessity...because they are small.  Obviously, then, everything to them looks and is so very big...enormous.  I was reminded of this when my youngest, now 13, commented, “when I was a little kid that looked so big to me...now its not so big at all”.  And the light-bulb went on for me and I connected in that moment with her observation and realized that it is like that all through-out life...not just because of our physical perspective...but our emotional perspective as well.  In 2011, well into a very traumatic time for myself and my family, everything loomed so very large to me...everything.  And in as much as I was an adult, it was as if I was that little child again, looking up at all that I was faced with and seeing it to be “so big”.  My emotional capacity had not yet stretched enough to take in all that I was experiencing, let alone process it and wrap around it...it was indeed big...very big.  But as the turmoil, stress, anxiety, pain, etc. washed over me and grabbed hold, another process was taking place...I was growing, and maturing, and understanding more and more about myself, who I was, and who I needed to be for my family and for myself.  As I grew...as I changed...so did my perspective.  The things that once seemed so insurmountably big...so overwhelming...well, they began to slowly shrink, and little by little, the perspective I had once held on them shifted...shifted from large and frightening and unable to be navigated...to...manageable...accomplishable...over-come-able.  I no longer saw myself as small against the backdrop of the turmoil...the turmoil had produced growth in me that allowed me to see realistically...to see without distortion...to see that even from our knees, those things do not need to frighten and cause anxiety. So it is with every new change or turmoil or unexpected situation...we again revert to being small until the events of the situation soak in...wash through us...grab hold of us and we allow them to grow us each time...so that we take another look and eventually they become small as well. 

The challenge to all this is that it never stops.  There is no point in this life...this side of the veil...in which that process arrests itself.  No time that we can say we have “arrived”...it continues in perpetuity.  In faith, however, we look at this as God’s way of refining us...this growing thing...His way of stretching us...making us more and more beautiful.  He takes what is broken...he gives what is broken...and He makes it beautiful....and in the process, our perspectives and our lives are changed and shaped and refined and where we once stood with life towering over us we can now see with new eyes...new understanding...new perspective...