Ups and Downs

The benefit of 20/20 vision is to see clearly.  Having 20/20 vision means we can see well without the assistance of glasses or contacts, but that is just how well our eyes see.  There is a phrase, ‘hindsight is 20/20’ which means when we look back on our lives we see the situations more clearly because when we are going through a situation, we tend to be too close to it and cannot see the path before us.

So when I look back on my life, I can take a microscope to different relationships or obstacles I faced or even how I raised my daughters and see things I didn’t see at the time.  I can recall a period of time when my husband and I were cutting coupons, planning meals according to the grocery ads.  We were in that place where there is too much month at the end of the money.  I’d be running on fumes to get to the gas station just to put five dollars’ worth of gas in the car because that is all I had.

In high school, I had a friend who worked at a small convenience store where they had a couple of gas pumps.  I’d go and hang out at the store, playing pinball and sipping on slurpies.  I had a car which my parents paid for and when I needed gas, I would fill the tank up.  I didn’t know there was any other way.  I recall watching people come in and put a twenty on the counter and say “twenty on two” to pre-pay for their gas.  Then one day, a person came in and pre-paid five dollars.  When they walked out, I asked the Supervisor, why they only paid for five dollars’ worth of gas.  His response shook me, “it’s probably all they have.”

I was naive to this idea.  It had never occurred to me that someone wouldn’t have money to fill their car up with gas.  I was a privileged child whose parents made good wages, enough to give me a reliable mode of transportation and the means to keep it regularly serviced, with a full tank of gas.  At the time, I thought I was in a low place in my life, because I had a curfew and I had to drive my brother around.  I was bound by my parents’ rules and I felt they were holding me back.  Of course hindsight is 20/20 and I can look back and clearly see how ridiculous my question must have sounded to the Supervisor, a man in his 30’s with a mortgage and family supported solely on what he made at that convenience store.

Today, I can see that through the eyes of my teenage self, I thought things were unfair and I never got what I wanted.  I thought those years were my low point with feelings of not being pretty enough or smart enough; I didn’t see all of the good.

Then as an adult, paying a mortgage and doing all I could to make the money stretch as far as it could, I found myself in that same situation.  I was in that low spot that from my tower of privilege in high school thought was so much lower than where I was at the time.

The truth is though, I didn’t feel like my paying for gas five dollars at a time was a low point.  Yes, it was humbling and often times stressful, but it was what needed to be done to provide for my family.  It wasn’t a low point because my husband and I were doing the best we could with the money we had.  It wasn’t a low point because there was love, God’s love in our lives.

In our early days, we struggled through many years of praying the tires on our car would survive another 15,000 miles because we didn’t have the money in the budget.  It seemed there was always some large service bill or appliance replacement.  However, we were blessed to be able to send our girls to private school where they still have deep connections to families and their teachers.

Yes, we shed some tears and tried to avoid the phone calls from the bill collectors, but we were rich.  We had love.  We had love for one another, and we had love for God. 

If I were to chart out my life according to the amount of money I’ve made in my life, it would go up and down.  But if I were to chart the amount of love I have in my life, it would be a continuous, steady flow up. Though it started with the love of my parents, it really skyrocketed when I began to love myself, I married my husband and I became a mom.

I am rich in love and it keeps me from letting any obstacles or troubles pull me down too far.  My faith in God teaches me there is nothing I cannot handle because God is always with me.  I know that even if tomorrow all the material things I’ve collected in my life disappear, it will not drag me down because I have love.  The love of my family and my God; it’s all I need to be able to see clearly.