Proper Perspective

During a difficult time in my life God showed me the value of a proper perspective.  Our perspective is just that, ours.  What God has planed for us, comes from his unique perspective. 

I was driving around Southern California buying supplies for my business and feeling very sorry for myself.   You see my Mom had died years earlier, my Father had just passed, and I had recently left a job I had for 13 years for all the wrong reasons. There is more but I can only take admitting to so much before I still become ashamed of that time in my life.   Needless to say I had been through some tough times and as expected I would go through some difficult bouts of self-pity.  On this day I found myself outside a Taco Bell that was just in front of a High School.  It was lunchtime and the place was swarming with High School kids.  I had never been to this Taco Bell before and I have not been there since, in fact I am not much of a fast food eater.  But for some reason on that day, at that time I was drawn to that place.  I went in and was greeted by a long line of kids waiting to place an order for food with little nutritional value, which adds only more intrigue to why I was there.  My M.O. was not to wait for anything and certainly not for something with no value.  But wait I did.  As I looked around, the little restaurant seemed to be alive with youth.  The decibel level in this little place seemed to be so high that it combined to form just one loud singular noise of youthful exuberance and hope.  I got my food and found the only seat available and sat down to eat.  Again I panned around the room to take in the chaos around me and to ponder why I was in this place eating this excuse for food.  Directly in my line of sight there was a young High School aged boy that was in a wheelchair.  He appeared to be paralyzed from the shoulders down and seemed to be in constant pain.  He was thrusting himself back and forth and moaning or wincing in what seemed to be a great deal of pain.  His parents were at his side, his Father was trying to feed him while his Mother gently rubbed his head and assured him that they loved him.  You could tell that his Mother rubbed his head purposefully and with great compassion as if this was the only place on his body that he could feel her touch.  The Father seemed oblivious to the fact that his young son’s mouth was a moving target for the food that he was determined to give his son.  The painful groans of this boy seemed to just blend in to the noise from the other kids in the restaurant and appeared normal.  If he were making this kind of noise at any other place he may have felt less comfortable with the circumstance.  By now all I could think of was how to eat my food and get out of this place.  I was very uncomfortable in the presence of this young handicapped boy and the chaos of High School kids on their lunch break.   For whatever reason a thought came over me like a wave as I made eye contact with the young kid in the wheelchair.  What does he see in me that makes him feel sorry for me, the way I am feeling about him.  I know he can see that I, as well as most of the people in his life, look at him with pity in their eyes and sorrow for an obvious accident that has damaged his physical being.  But what would be so obvious about me if only he knew?  Was I wearing a similar handicap that was just not visible to others?  All these thoughts started pouring into my head and I could not control them, nor could I understand why now and what this meant or where it was going.  I answered my thoughts with a resounding “this is ridiculous”, if this young boy could get up out of his chair he would do it and gladly trade places with me.  He is in obvious pain, he has no feeling in his body from the shoulders down, he is stuck in that chair with real pain while all his peers are experiencing the growing pains of youth.  Why am I doing this to myself and to him for that matter?  Why are these thoughts going through my head?  I began to get frustrated and become more uncomfortable.  I was just about to throw away what was left of my lunch and get out of dodge when I stopped and took a good long look at this young boy again making eye contact.  He feels sorry for me, he wouldn’t trade places with me if it meant he could walk.  I could feel him thinking those thoughts.  This was powerful and I was now very interested in the depth of my thoughts and sat back down to examine what I was feeling.  You see he was looking at me as he sat with his loving parents.  He had parents!  If he could console me he would have told me he was sorry that I could not experience the intangible feeling of loving parents for it is but a fraction of the tangible feeling of limbs.  At that moment I realized that a teenager in a wheelchair could teach me a valuable lesson.  All I could focus on initially was pity for what I perceived as someone less fortunate than I, but what was happening was an epiphany that he was thinking the same thing about me.  Who was less fortunate?  The reality became clear; God created us for his purpose and we are all fortunate in the manor that he intends.   At that point I was encouraged to stop feeling sorry for myself, and to begin living for the purpose God intends for me.  We all carry around wheelchair-sized burdens that when given to God and put in the proper prospective can have glorious silver linings.  God took me to lunch that day in Orange County and despite the lack of nutritional value in the food I left nourished spiritually with a renewed purpose.    

CM Gartner