A matter of perspective

At a recent meeting, I spent over half an hour listing off my qualifications, my roles and my interests to provide my background story. The person I was meeting with then asked me a question that required an answer from a different perspective.  On a full page of preparatory notes filled with dot points, I had recorded only three lines that helped me answer this question.  The question he asked was something like “What has God been doing in your life?”  At first, I was overcome with emotion and felt quite vulnerable to share that which was deeply personal. It was not something I usually talked about when discussing my business and career goals, even though we were both Christians. It got me thinking though…    

Is there more than one way to frame my life’s journey and tell my story? What if my particular way of recalling my life needs to change or at least be broadened? Perhaps it’s time I focused on a different perspective.

A number of themes have started to emerge as I have been looking back and telling my story. I have been convicted that perhaps I have been focusing a little too much on as single perspective .  What would my story be if I asked different questions of myself and my life? 

Abe Lincoln is attributed with having said “We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”  Have I, I wondered, been looking at the thorns and missing the beauty of the roses in my life?  Instead of asking “Why did this awful thing happen to me?”, what would my story be if I asked myself “How is this the best thing that happened to me?”  Instead of looking at the trials in my life, what would it look like if I looked for God’s providence instead?  Instead of looking at achievements of the ‘head’, what if I looked for achievements of the ‘heart’? 

I started a journey today going back through some of the scripts I have recorded about my life and have been asking myself different questions.  I still have a way to go and am getting a little excited. As I look past some of the thorns I am beginning to notice some of the roses. 

This reminds me of an old Indian story I once heard about six blind men who approach an elephant for the first time. These men describe the whole beast deduced from the portion they could feel.  Of course, when one is feeling the trunk, another the tail, another the leg, an ear, the belly and the tusk it is any wonder they could not agree on what an elephant looked like.  The problem is that each one only had a partial view and were describing the whole from their single perspective. 

I draw comfort from the fact that God can see the whole clearly. I may never know everything that He is doing in my life.  I do know though that He loves me and that in all things He works for good because I love Him. (Romans 8:28)  The Bible talks a lot about being thankful and having gratitude.  I confess that when my perspective is small and certainly in the midst of pain that can be hard to do.  I do not want to grow old recalling only the thorns and missing the roses.  I am committed to recalling and perhaps retelling my story from a different perspective. 

“It’s not what you look at that matters; it’s what you see.”  Henry David Thoreau.

Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash