My world is enlarged through the beautiful, brown eyes of my wife. She is able to share with me perspectives and sights I would otherwise have sightlessly missed.
She was raised in Southeastern Oregon, in the high desert by a wildlife biologist. Her Dad often took her on drives and walks while he was doing game counts. He taught her to see. Often driving or walking with only the sound of the wind he would point and she was supposed to figure out what he was pointing at. Pam has an innate alertness and power to reach out with her eyes and perceive things, invisible to others. She took her natural genius for perception and developed it as one of her “Super Powers.”
When we would visit her old stomping grounds I would be impressed with the wide vistas, but the greys and brown of the desert were plain and drab to me. Pam on the other hand would be delighted to see all the shades, the angles of the craggy outcroppings, the orange and yellow lichen, the velvet texture of the Ponderosa pine, the quaking aspen and the scrubby juniper She would point out to me the rabbit brush and its shiny leaves compared to the tumble weeds ghost-like shadows.
While we drive the lonely roads, I have a vague, dull sense that there is a world about us, but Pam sees it all! Her telescopic eyes see the elk standing like a statue a half mile away, camouflaged into the hillside, and the doe and fawn bedded down under the juniper’s shadow. I see the hill.
She was by far the first to point out to the children the herd of deer silently moving away from our approach, the bald eagle soaring above the river, the young bobcat statue still, and other contours of the land.
I was born short-sighted. Pam was definitely born long-sighted, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t see things up close. Pam is able to see the wee little horny toad skitter across the sand, lizards sun bathing lazily on the rock and the snake sliding quietly around the bush. None of these register in my senses.
From time to time I think of how Jesus said, “If you have eyes, use them to perceive. If you have ears, use them to comprehend.” My wife has exercised those senses as the athlete trains their muscles.
Having Pam with me rouses me from my bland, blinded stupor – reminding me there are things all about me to be discovered, realized, appreciated and wondered in. She has tutored me in the obvious, where the obvious beforehand was unreachable.
One of the greatest benefits of friendship is the gift of perspective. It pleases me when a friend says, “This is how I see it.”
Where we are dull friends point their floodlamps. When we see only monochrome they bring out the crayons and show us the colors. They brighten our lives by revealing the vivid liveliness we otherwise miss.
“Eyes that see and ears which hear, the Lord has made them both.
Steve Johnson (with a little help from Pam)
Landingstripenterprises.com
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