The Eyes Have it

“Did you see that?”  The senses amaze me. How can two people standing right next to each other see two completely different things?

 On a pretty day, my husband and I like to venture out, drive around and just take in some scenery. Which I know seems odd since we live on a farm, in the woods, surrounded by mountains, but we do. On this particular day, we took a ride down to Spring City, which is a sweet, cute little country town that I adore. We had some intel that one of the oldest steam trains from Chattanooga was coming through and we were excited to get a glimpse of it.  Not sure what time it would arrive, we went down early and parked ourselves by the depot to get a good spot for the tripod and all the equipment I brought to photograph the event.  We settled in a grassy area with a side street behind us and the tracks in front of us.  Beyond the tracks was the main road and a traffic light. Perfect place to get the best shots.

About twenty minutes into our waiting, I hear screeching from the main road beyond the tracks, then a slam, and finally the sound of metal crunching.  We all jumped to our feet to see one vehicle had run the red light and slammed into another.  We moved closer to see what happened and there were the vehicles that were hit along with others that had stopped when it happened. I had to be the first to open my mouth.  “That red truck with the trailer hit that minivan.”  My husband just looks at me like I’m from another planet and says, “Did you even see it? The Impala ran that light and hit the van, the truck was just driving around it.”  Well, that’s not what I saw.  Then my husband, a former police officer, educates me on why officers will interview multiple people multiple times to try to decipher what the real story is. If they all saw the exact same thing, they were probably lying!

We see what we focus on. What we focus on becomes the main event of the story. When I looked in the direction of the accident, what caught my eye was the red truck. It was the focal point of my viewing.  Life is exactly like this. I have wasted many days focusing on the wrong things and letting the good things slip by unnoticed.  .  A few days ago, my attention was  honed in on all the things I needed to do and thing I needed to prepare for the next day.  While I was in my “zone”, I let my teenager, who actually came home after school today, go by unnoticed. Those few moments I live for now to see him hanging around, gone because I was focused on something else. I didn’t see him.  We all may have a different perspective of the world around us, but we do have a choice on what we focus that view on.

Oh, and the train? It was awesome. It flew by so fast and so loud, that if you blinked, you would have missed it.

What are you going to focus on today? What could you be missing while you focus on the things that are fleeting?

Dog Days

I have 2 mountain Cur dogs. Our dogs here are outside dogs. When you live on a farm and dogs love to continuously roll in all things farm related, you really have no choice but to keep them outside. We take good care of our dogs. They run and play all day, following the tractors everywhere they go are laying on the porch when we are inside. At night it’s a different story. If we do not leash them, they will chase, bark and wreak havoc on the entire surrounding area. Every night we tie them. They have their food and water, a cozy dog house filled with hay and cushions for ultimate warmth and comfort.  Each dog has a long chain. The youngest dog, Puppy, has a collar and a clip to tie to and the other, Jazz, has a choke chain that clips to her leash.  The choke chain was the last thing we found that she couldn’t Houdini out of and we have designated this chore of tying and untying the dogs to my son.

 At first light, he goes outside and unties them. They get so excited that they run off at top speed for another day exploring the acres.  Before bed they are fed and tied again, and this is a routine that’s been done all their lives.

Today was a different day.  My son was late for school and asked me if I would untie the dogs for him, so I agreed and I walked outside, unclipped Puppy and unclipped Jazz. Puppy speeds off toward the creek while Jazz just stands there wagging her tail at me. “Go”, I said. She stares at me. “You’re free, go on.”, I repeat.  She stands there. “Fine then, just stand there”. I walked away back into the house. Some time has gone by and I look outside and there she still stands. I think, that’s weird.  What you realize pretty quickly living on a farm is that not only are humans’ creatures of habit, so are animals.

With this knowledge I called my husband and said “Hey, I untied Jazz but she’s not leaving her doghouse?” He asked me how I had untied her and I told him that I unclipped the leash from her choke chain.  Sounded obvious to me.  He laughed. He informed me that I had to take off the choke chain and leave it clipped to the leash.  She still felt the choke chain on her neck and believed she was still tied so she knew she couldn’t go anywhere.  What? Really? She saw me unclip the leash. It was in my hand and I threw it to the side as she watched me. I told her to go and she was free. She should have seen that even though the chain was still there, it didn’t matter anymore.

Is this starting to sound familiar? It sure did to me. Sounds like a modern-day Christian. Sounds like my plight. Jesus died and took on the sin of the whole world. Then He rose and defeated death and sin. Forever. You are free to go run, you’ve been unchained. The problem is we still wear the chains of our sin like a choke collar and we may even believe we are still tied and unable to run.  You are not. “You’re free, go on.”