Emerald City Glasses

I think I sometimes get confused and pray that the Lord will show me what He has for me to see or learn or experience in a day, when I should be praying to see the world through His eyes instead. This hit me one afternoon as a passing thought while I was sitting at Kudu, but then one of those little lizard gecko things fell on me from a tree and so I was momentarily preoccupied with becoming a stone statue and waiting for it to move along. That perhaps wasn't the quickest means of de-geckoifying myself, so by the time he had hopped along my mind had as well. 

It was not one of those bolt of lightning original thought kind of moments - really more like a "Oh yeah, duh," hit yourself on the head sort of thing - but it has still been fun to see how the Lord has used it to shift me. As Tracy Lord said, "the time to make up your mind about people is never." This thought rang true to me, and not just because I was mesmerized by Katherine Hepburn's every move at the time. Sometimes the culture that we live in (especially us college students with few responsibilities to anyone besides ourselves) makes it easy for us to forget how much the Lord loves others. I get so busy reminding myself of how much the Lord has loved me and sacrificed for me and forgiven me that I forget how much He appreciates the people that I don't even know. As soon as I looked up from my own concerns I found much to revel in. The Lord has created some pretty fascinating people, to say the least.

Like my pilot the last time I flew, who introduced himself as Luke Skywalker and then announced that, "Airtran is always looking for ways to continue to keep our fares low for you travelers, and so we have introduced a new frequent flushers program! Current rates are two dollars a flush, but while we are still on the ground we are running a special - two flushes for the price of one! And ladies and gentlemen, for every 5 flushes, you earn one free flush!" 

Like my cashier at Caviar & Bananas who literally sing-songed her way through our entire interaction. "Hellooo! Ohhh I looove thiis saaandwhiiich you'ree goiiinngg too loooove thiiiis sannndwhiiiiich, that will beee sevennn eiighty fouuur, enjjOOOOYYYYYY"

Like Sherri, the real life Target Lady who literally shut down her station after I left to get herself some Sugar Free Halls Defense 100% Daily Value Vitamin C Cough Drops. ("Oh these look great! Do they taste good? Are they over in the pharmacy section you know I need to get some I keep getting sick and my son says "Mom you know you just need some vitamin C" and OH MY GOSH they're only a dollar fifty are there some left!?")

To me my interaction with such people is often limited to my perspective. But that wasn't just my flight home, that was Mr. Skywalker going above and beyond the call of duty to try to brighten people's days. That wasn't just my trip to Target, it was Sherri's fourth cold in her second month on the job. That wasn't just my treat at a fun restaurant, it was that cashier trying to "keep her brain from going to mush today" to the tune of Beyonce. 

These encounters are everywhere, and yet the more they started to stick out to me, the more I noticed other people ignoring them. I don't know what was wrong with all of the people flying from Atlanta to Charleston that night, but not one of them so much as giggled, (there were a few sardonic snorts) and there I was cracking up in 9A (the window seat, obviously). While I have gotten a lot of enjoyment from noticing the people around me more, the real lesson for me has shown itself when I have disagreed with people (Gasp! Meredith? Disagree with someone!?). It may be elementary, but its hard to realize that other people's opinions matter as much and as little as my own whenever they claim things that seem preposterous to me. The more I live, the more I see that I should simply appreciate and love those the Lord has created, be they known or unknown to me. This is certainly not a new thought, but I find I often have to re-realize it in my life. So thanks Captain Skywalker, thanks...

"Even though I'm almost seventy years old, I got a lot to learn, too. I used to spend a lotta time worryin that I was different from other people, even from other homeless folks. Then, after I met Miss Debbie and Mr Ron, I worried I was so different from them that we wadn't ever gon' have no kind a' future. But I found out everybody's different, the same kind of different as me. We're all just regular folks walkin' down the road God done set in front of us." - Denver Moore

PS - In case you were wondering this is what a lizard gecko thing looks like when its flying through the air towards you: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Uroplatus_fimbriatus_(3).jpg

You would have been paralyzed too.

Everything But The Kitchen Sink

Well, here I am. I could save face and claim to be here because the world is just demanding more Meredith, but I'm pretty sure no one would fall for that. In fact, when people have said "Oh I would read your blog!" to me - sure my vanity was flattered, but in truth my primary reaction was fear. Fear because I am a person to whom strong opinions occur as naturally as breathing, and fear because this platform would certainly encourage me to spout off all the more. Nevertheless, here I am. What I have come to realize about "blogging" is that by participating I could either fall prey to my propensity for getting up on my soap box, or I could challenge myself to see things differently. I was re-re-re-reading a book the other day, and as often happens I was struck by something I had skimmed over before. The main character wrote in a letter to her publisher, "She was a noticer Sydney, like me." While it may not have been key to the plot, that line reverberated through my consciousness, and the voices in my head started yelling, "me too! me too! me too!" 

I have noticed that I notice things that are often of no note. 

Oswald Chambers said, "You can never set apart for God something that you desire for yourself to achieve your own satisfaction." So, as I sit in my sea of pillows with my off-brand Raison Bran (which is better than the real deal, seriously they've got the raison to flake ratio down pat) I do hereby solemnly swear to honor the hallowed halls of blogdom by resisting the temptation to preach, and I will just be A Noticer. For Jesus. Plus if people read my thoughts, I won't have to watch their eyes glaze over when they realize that yes, I can possibly have more to say about Michelle Kwan and -did you know that she was a foreign ambassador? - they can just clickity click and be on their merry little way.