So on my way home from the VA today, I decided to take the scenic route. Don't ask me where that is out here because everything is scenic. I was looking for something off the beaten path, a place that I could go, meditate, pray, and just soak up the glory of His presence. I started looking for places to park because it was just so beautiful that I wanted to take pictures and lots of them. I don't know what I love more, writing or photography; it's definitely a tossup.
Anyway, I can’t find a place to park because the road is to narrow. I thought about parking on the grass, but for some reason, voices of tech school popped in my head and SSgt Fight shouting “GET OFF MY GRASS.” So as I continue my drive and become resolved at just looking at the surroundings, I’m a little disappointed at not being able to take a photograph. This spawns a thought back to the beginning of the semester in speech class.
We were told to do a speech about ourselves using an object. I couldn’t think of an object for the life of me to describe myself. I thought of using a scratch n sniff sticker (see previous note), a chess board, and then I somehow settled on a picture frame. An empty picture frame, to be exact. I told the class not to look at the picture frame as being empty per se but more of lack of picture, which represented the lack of my father in my life. I let my pastor’s wife read it to see what she thought of it. She said, I like it, but I need some clarifications.
You see, I love sharing my writing with people, the more who read it the better. I want to know what people think of it. Do they agree, disagree, did it touch them in some way? I want to use my writing in order to make a difference in someone’s life. Chances are, it may only be my life that receives a blessing from it, and that’s okay too. However, I try to be honest in my writing, and I wish people would be honest about what they think. Even if they don’t like it, chances are, it still made them think.
So back to the pastor’s wife, we have a sit down and she says, well it’s really good, but…Do you think God sees you as an empty picture frame? The thought actually never crossed my mind. In a flash, I realized that this was so much deeper than I could fathom. Instantly, I realized that subconsciously I do think of myself as an empty picture frame, someone who’s got a good foundation, but someone who still needs work on the inside. I tried to turn away because, well--I didn’t want her to see me cry. And well, what was the point of hiding it, she already knew. You see, that was the whole point. She knew the emotion she could evoke from me by asking that question, but she still did because she loves me, cares about me, and wants the best for me. She wanted me to dig deep within myself and get to the root of the cause, and, at the same time, she took a chance of stepping outside of the norm and asked me an honest question. Seems to be something lacking in today's society for fear of hurting people's feelings.
It has been a few months since I have thought of that. The person who wrote that speech is not the person who writes this today. It’s almost as if that one simple question set off a cataclysmic event in me, one of self-discovery and getting back to the roots of who I am and where I am going in life. It actually should be obvious to everyone with all of the writing I’ve been doing. It’s like my brain is on overload, and I can’t shut it off. It’s been this way before, but, at that time, it was a dark period in my life. Everything I wrote was of despair and destruction.
Today, I find myself more thought provoking, because by asking questions of myself, I can ask questions of others. Maybe one sentence will spark a fortunate event for someone else. Because you see, the picture frame has a story all its own, and what I choose to do with it is what’s most important. I can keep it and use it as a shrine of what was, or I can fill it and look forward to what’s to come. I choose the latter. What say you?
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