When vision blurs

“When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.” ~ Ansel Adams

Focus.  That’s this week’s word for the weekly photo challenge.

And I am anything but focused.  Distractions abound. They flit in and out of my sight like the fireflies flickering in my yard once darkness descends.  Now you see them, now you don’t.  Sparkle.  Look there.   No… twinkle….look there. 

So many things require my attention, yet I can’t stay focused because it’s hard to juggle all the balls when you’re not centered.  When you can’t concentrate because there are just too many balls and you’re the one who’s out of sync.  You’re the one who can’t zone in on the task at hand.  The uncertainties, the what-ifs, threaten to take over and you have to come to grips.  You must focus.

As an amateur and hobbyist photographer, I know how vital focus is.  When you ‘see’ a photo-worthy shot, you must decide where the focus will be.  Is it on the ray of sunshine coming through the window or the tiny dust motes you can only see glinting in the sunlight?  Do you focus on the rose, the bud, the leaf, or the thorn?

And will your camera capture what you see?  Can you narrow the focus to show what made the picture worth taking in the first place?

There’s a parallel between photography and life.  Both thrive on focus.   

When my focus is shattered into a thousand directions, I feel so out of control.  And I have to rein in that panicked, blurred sense of chaos to concentrate on the truth that I know.  I am not in control, God is.   And He is far more capable of handling everything than I am.

I have a request for those of you who are prayer warriors.  I ask that you pray for my daughter as she has surgery today.  It’s nothing life-threatening, but she’s been experiencing pain that has kept her focused on her infirmity….and her mama focused on worrying about her.

When my vision is blurred by worry and fear, I must keep my eyes on and my heart tuned to my Savior and centered on my faith.  And that is true focus.

“When trouble comes, focus on God’s ability to care for you.” ~ Charles Stanley

©2013 mamasemptynest.wordpress.com

Focus on the furrows

It’s just a rectangular brown patch plunked down in the middle of a green expanse but amazing things happen there every summer.

I’m writing about my husband’s garden in our back yard.  I view it from the window over my kitchen sink, from our breakfast nook windows and when I’m enjoying the sunshine on our deck.

In late autumn and throughout the winter season, the garden plot reminds me of an open wound – like when the skin on your knee has been painfully scraped off by a fall.  It’s bare and raw-looking and not pleasant to look at.  Even in early spring, that patch of ground looks forlorn and forgotten while the rest of the lawn bursts forth in brilliantly lush green color.  For several months, the garden is just a plot of barren dirt.

But then something miraculous happens.  Hubby’s friend brings his tractor to our country home and tills up the soil in that woe begotten area of the yard.   And suddenly, the garden awakens from its slumber.  Freshly tilled and turned over fertile ground beckons to hubby,   “Come!  It’s time! Let’s get started!”

This spring the rain has lasted and lasted.  Our garden patiently waits for the gardener, but there haven’t been enough sunshiny dry days yet for sowing seeds and planting young seedlings which will eventually yield delightful crops of vegetables.   In between bouts of rainstorms, hubby did manage to plant a few rows of leaf lettuce, spinach and peas but the largest part of the garden remains unsown.

I enjoy watching my husband (that city boy turned country gardener/landscaper) prepare his garden.  He wields his hoe to remove any weeds,  marks rows with string, digs straight furrows into the dirt, and then carefully places tiny seeds and plants into the ground.

This year he plans the usual:  cherry tomatoes, green beans, carrots, radishes, green peppers, Brussels sprouts, banana peppers and cucumbers.  Every year, he introduces something new – last year it was sweet potatoes, this year watermelon.

Creating a vegetable masterpiece with his own hands bestows a great sense of accomplishment upon my husband.  He loves to get his hands dirty and see the results of his work – and of course – eat the delicious rewards!  If a particular type of plant fails to flourish, hubby doesn’t get discouraged; he just moves on and tries something different.

So his garden is a work in progress.  Watching him as he creates straight furrows in our garden plot reminds me of scripture.  “…No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” ~ Luke 9:62

There’s a good lesson for life.  Do we plow straight furrows as we forge ahead in life?  Or do we allow obstacles or distractions to lead us astray and make our paths crooked?  Do we look forward or continually glance back over our shoulders at our past mistakes and dwell on them so we can’t make our way straight?

As the farmer plows his fields, he keeps his eyes focused ahead of him not behind.  And that’s also how my husband plants his garden in straight rows looking forward at what’s to come instead of what’s been before.

I think that’s what I need to do today in Chapter 5, Page 21, in my book of Opportunity.  I need to fix my eyes forward and keep them centered on my Savior, forgetting the past, leaving issues behind.

The Master Gardener provides His garden of grace for me and He asks me to keep my eyes on Him, concentrate on what He calls me to do to further His kingdom, and ignore distractions that may cause me to stray.

How about you?  Are you plowing straight furrows or are you zigzagging along without purpose?  Focus on Him and He will make your paths straight.

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”  ~ Proverbs 3:5-6

©2011 mamasemptynest.wordpress.com

A reward that’s better than a pony

I wonder if some of the most famous American innovators ever spun their wheels.

I imagine Thomas Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park, diligently working away in his laboratory devising various mechanisms to see what worked best at bringing his inventions to reality.  I can’t really imagine him just toodling around his workshop idling meandering from one thing to another and not completing a darn thing.

I think about people like Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford and countless other famous inventors.   As they tinkered, designed, contemplated and planned, I wonder how they handled days when they didn’t accomplish much.   They surely must have had “one of those days” when they didn’t achieve what they set out to do that day.

Great minds like theirs must have been sharply focused.  How else could they bring their ideas to fruition?  Alexander Graham Bell once stated, “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”

Focus wasn’t one of my strong points today.  I just spent several hours at my job and I felt like a whirling dervish – spinning around and around but not really accomplishing much.  Days like today really grate on my nerves.  I’m one of those task-driven individuals.   I like lists and I really like crossing things off the lists.

I don’t know who said “A person who aims at nothing is sure to hit it” but I wholeheartedly agree.  That’s why days when I get easily distracted or sidetracked leave me feeling irritated.  I don’t like aiming at nothing.  I want to place the target in my cross-hairs and blast the thing.  Boom.  Done.  Finished.  That’s how I roll.

My aim on my target was off today.  Too many distractions, too many interruptions, too much activity going on in my office, too much to accomplish.  I’m not sure on which to hang the blame for my inability to focus today.

Motivational speaker and writer Denis Waitley says, “Don’t dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next. Spend your energies on moving forward toward finding the answer.”  That seems like sound advice to me.

I’m pretty certain my husband is working on that theory at the present time, moving forward trying to find an answer.  He says he’s still looking for his pony.  If that statement totally confuses you, I’m not surprised.  Allow me to enlighten you.

My husband once met the late Ronald Reagan, two-term President of the United States.  A picture of them shaking hands graces a wall in my husband’s office.  So, according to something my hubby recently read, the pony idea comes from a story Reagan loved to tell.

Peter Robinson, Reagan’s speechwriter, wrote a book entitled, How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life.  The following is an excerpt from his book:

The Pony In the Dung Heap:  When Life Buries You, Dig – Journal Entry, June 2002.  Over lunch today I asked Ed Meese about one of Reagan’s favorite jokes. “The pony joke?” Meese replied. “Sure I remember it. If I heard him tell it once, I heard him tell it a thousand times.”

The joke concerns twin boys of five or six. Worried that the boys had developed extreme personalities — one was a total pessimist, the other a total optimist — their parents took them to a psychiatrist.

First the psychiatrist treated the pessimist. Trying to brighten his outlook, the psychiatrist took him to a room piled to the ceiling with brand-new toys.  But instead of yelping with delight, the little boy burst into tears. “What’s the matter?” the psychiatrist asked, baffled. “Don’t you want to play with any of the toys?” “Yes,” the little boy bawled, “but if I did I’d only break them.”

Next the psychiatrist treated the optimist. Trying to dampen his outlook, the psychiatrist took him to a room piled to the ceiling with horse manure. But instead of wrinkling his nose in disgust, the optimist emitted just the yelp of delight the psychiatrist had been hoping to hear from his brother, the pessimist. Then he clambered to the top of the pile, dropped to his knees, and began gleefully digging out scoop after scoop with his bare hands. “What do you think you’re doing?” the psychiatrist asked, just as baffled by the optimist as he had been by the pessimist. “With all this manure,” the little boy replied, beaming, “there must be a pony in here somewhere!”

“Reagan told the joke so often,” Meese said, chuckling, “that it got to be kind of a joke with the rest of us. Whenever something would go wrong, somebody on the staff would be sure to say, ‘There must be a pony in here somewhere.'”

No doubt, Ronald Reagan loved to tell this story because he was such an optimist.  I think it’s a great story to personify focus as well.  When life hands us manure as it often does, we’ve got to keep looking for the pony – the very thing that makes going through the manure worth the effort.  That must be our focus.

And that thought reminds me of scripture.  So today as I near the end of Chapter One in my book of Opportunity, on this 27^th page,  God reminds me:  “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,  I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” ~ Philippians 3:13-15 (New International Version)

Even if I feel like I might be just spinning in circles, when my focus is on God, He has a better reward than a pony.

©2011 mamasemptynest.wordpress.com

Someone needs to focus!

It’s the first Friday in December.  (Oops, need to change the calendar from November to December.)

No work or school presentations to give today.  (Good! Maybe now I can start “Operation  Christmas.”)

Need to eat breakfast.  (Better just throw a load of laundry in first then gulp down some cereal and a hot cup of tea.)

Kitty is ringing her jingle bell and wants in from the garage.  (Let in kitty.)

Get in the mood for decorating.  Sit down in front of TV to turn on Christmas music channel.  (Cat meows and jumps into lap.  Purr, purr, rub, rub.  Kitty needs some loving.)

Spend time with kitty.  (Poor baby, I’ve been ignoring you the last few days.  Kitty needs a treat!  Go to pantry for kitty treats and make her do her tricks for them.)

Time to start decorating!  (Wait, that load of laundry needs thrown in the dryer now.)

Better go upstairs and see what other loads of laundry await me.  (Side trip to son’s old bedroom brings more laundry.  Man, that guy has too many clothes if he left all these dirty ones behind because he didn’t need them.)

Kitty wants to go out again.  (On the way, throw another load of laundry in the washer.)

Now go to garage to bring in some Christmas decoration boxes!  (But first take teacup to dishwasher. Oh, it’s full and needs run now.)

Time to decorate!  (Just remembered, middle sister called and left me a message yesterday, better call her back.)

Telephone call’s over, now go to garage and get those boxes!  (Oh darn! There’s those Christmas cards I started addressing the other evening and didn’t finish, spread out all over the coffee table.)

Start picking up Christmas card mess of cards, envelopes, red and green pens, address labels.  (You know, I haven’t even written our annual Christmas missive yet!)

Walk over to the computer and turn the time-stealing thing on.  (Well, now that I turned the computer on, I should really just check my email.)

Dryer beeps, clothes are dry. (Go to laundry room and fold clothes.  Return to computer.)

Read email from my dear oldest retired sister who’s living it up in Arizona. (Hmm, sis and brother-in-law are stuck in their RV with very cold weather.  Guess she’s not quite living it up in balmy temperatures after all!)

Compose and send email back to sis.  (Don’t want her to think I’m not thinking of her, after all because I really do miss her!)

Close out email.  (I probably should check my other email account.  Good news there from my new friend.  Her daughter is recovering from a very bad car accident.  Praise God!  Say another prayer for her.  Maybe I should write back to my friend, no better save that for later.)

Kitty rings her jingle bell which means she wants back inside.  (Open door and let kitty in.)

Go back to computer and click out of email account.  (Well, while I’m on the internet I may as well check Facebook.   Wow, more good news there.  Just one more thing to check and then I’ll start that Christmas letter.)

Open my blog.  (Oh look, my dear friend left me some comments.  Have to answer her!)

Stomach growls.  (Probably should grab a bite of lunch before I start!)

Now, time to write that letter!  (Start composing the annual news.  Wait, do I even have Christmas copy paper?  Look in printer desk for paper.  Oh, good.  Found some!  But also found copies of my old Christmas letters all the way back to 1999.)

Sit down and read old letters.  (What lovely memories.  So many blessings over all those years since we moved back to the homeland and when our children were still living at home.  Sigh….)

Finish THIS YEAR’S Christmas letter!!  Start printing.  (Well, if I’m going to print the letters, I need to finish the Christmas card chore too.)

Gather up Christmas cards, etc. from coffee table and move it all to the kitchen table.  (Wow!  There are a few snowflakes flying around out there.)

Look out window. (The ground is still white.  I do like it when the landscape is blanketed in white.  So pretty!)

Kitty wants out again! (Oh for goodness sake!  Let cat out.)

Finish those Christmas cards!  (Address a few more envelopes. Shoot, I’m running out of cards and letters.  Start searching for some leftover cards from Christmases past.)

Go back to the computer to print more letters.  Hear jingle bell again!  (That darn cat.  She wants in again.  Make up your mind, kitty!  You’re driving me nuts!)

Print more letters.  (You know, I haven’t even written an entry for my blog yet today.  Maybe I should do that, and then after it’s done I can concentrate on finishing those cards.)

Write blog entry.  Glance at clock.  (Good grief, it’s almost 4 p.m.  What have I accomplished? Hmmm…not one Christmas decoration dressing up the house yet!)

Look out window again.  (The snow’s really coming down now!  Sing “Here Comes Suzy Snowflake.”)

Okay, friends, that’s it.  I need to focus!  I’m finishing those cards if I have to tie myself to the kitchen table to do so.  (But first I have to get that other load of laundry out of the dryer.)

When hubby comes home this evening from his stressful day at work, I’d like to tell him at least one Christmas task is accomplished.  Wish me luck and no distractions!

©2010 mamasemptynest.wordpress.com