Gotta Wear Shades

Several years ago, I had a friend, a curious person. She was deathly afraid of squirrels. Sitting a on a park bench on a college campus, she would bark out obscenities mid-conversation when one came anywhere near us. And seeing that this particular campus had a healthy legacy of glorious trees, we never finished our conversations. I did, however, learn some interesting new words that require a lot of soap if you're going to use them.

Leah felt very different from me. I learned she was highly analytical whereas I am highly intutive. I once told her, "I go through my entire day living and making decisions intuitively." She said she did the exact opposite, and we were both fascinated that any other way than what he had known was possible. She was also a supremely gifted athlete. I had suffered some serious burn injuries in the recent past and was just finding my healthful stride, proud that I had built up to running five miles in the mountains three or four times a week. We discovered one day that we ran the same trail for exercise and decided to tackle it together one Saturday morning.

On that particular Saturday, it had snowed more than a foot overnight. Fresh powder is harder to run on than sand, and my usual five mile loop was more exhausting than ever. Once we reached the first plateau of the run's initial uphile climb, I was winded and considering a change of plans to a nearby coffeeshop. But Leah, she was breathing as normally as if she'd been relaxing in a sauna.

The man in me, and the competitor . . . but more the man, couldn't tag out when running with a girl. The whole time I struggled to keep pace, throwing out my half of the conversation between labored breaths. "No__I__haven't__read__that__yet." And in an effort to buy some time I volleyed, "Tell__me__your__life__story."

When we finally made it back to the trailhead beautifully situated on the foothills of the Rockies, we sat down at a picnic table. Thinking this was more of a friendship building exercise than a calf-building one, I brought some high-fat-content pastries to undo whatever physical good had just been done. (While eating I learned she was recently a nationally ranked distance runner and did triathlons for fun in her spare time. That information would have been nice beforehand to coddle my dwindling ego. But I could rebuild it, nonetheless, retroactively.)

Lounging in a sea of freshly fallen snow under full sunlight is hard on the eyes, like sitting on a blanket of tinfoil, mirrors, or halogen lamps. Even with my sunglasses my eyes were still straining. But Leah, she was bright-eyed with no glasses at all. "Would you like my sunglasses?" I ask gentlemanly, hoping she declines because squinting makes me sleepy. She says no explaining that she never wears sunglasses, no matter what. As any regular person would, I asked why. And her answer fascinated me: "I want to see the world as it is."

I didn't take this comment to mean she judgmental of all the sunglass-wearers the world over. To my mind, she was making an incredible comment on her own values about life. Her comment translated: I don't want anything to come between me and what's really out there.

I've oftened wondered since that conversation if there are ways that I try to filter the world as it is to make it more manageable for my feeble self. Of course I do. I put all kinds of things between me and reality. Smoking, sometimes. Drinking, sometimes. Food, nearly always. Entertainment, company, chores, work. Any of the things that fill up the hours in a day that keep you from forthrightly facing deeper issues, both the good and the troublesome. All of my little devils are enjoyed, mind you, with restraint and control, and in socially acceptable quanities. I feel like they're flying just below everyone's radar--even my own sometimes--so they don't seem like problems. They're very clever like that. For instance, I don't curl up with Little Debbies and Bourbon for a pre-breakfast snack. I just space them out and enjoy them "when I should" so as not to seem like a problem, Little Debbies right after breakfast and Bourbon after work. But in my soul I know something is coming between me and the way the world is, like I need a buffer to manage the disappointments, insecurities, and fear.

But more and more, by the grace of God, I'm trying to take my sunglasses off. I'm paying closer attention to those slight tugs of self-preservation that smack of reliance on anything but him. As a saved Christian, I imagine standing before my God, the brightest thing beyond imagining, with all of my failures laid bare. I won't need sunglasses then, and I'm deeply thankful and at peace with that assurance. Heartened by that reality, I'm trying to live more honestly with myself, my wife, with God, and the world, no matter how bright.