Thoughts from My Heart Today

If you missed yesterday's post, there are a host of pictures to go along with the start of podcast stories today. We toured Tippecanoe county, Ryan got to meet a llama, and we were utterly confused by some hiking trails. Lots of good stuff in this week's Spill the Beans!

Click here to listen.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I went to the eye doctor and found out I have 20/15 vision. I have actually declared myself to have 20/12 vision, which I know is not even a thing, but I could read half the 20/10 line on the chart, so I figured I should get extra points for being better than 20/15 and settled for the happy medium of 20/12.

And this is why I'm not an eye doctor.

Well. Among many other reasons.

Anyway, I've always had great vision, much to the dismay of my sisters, who did not inherit this gene, and until Ryan made me go to the eye doctor last year, I'd never been. I'd had my vision checked in the free checks at school and the BMV, but that was the closest I'd ever gotten to an eye doctor.

Fortunately we're friends with our optometrist, so my ridiculous overkill in giggling to compensate for the nervousness of someone messing with my eyes is not quite as embarrassing. He's used to my quirks.

So he told me this year that my vision was amazing, and he went on to say that whenever my vision did slack off to being the perfect 20/20, I would actually feel like it was terrible and I needed glasses. Isn't that weird? Perfect vision that feels like a blurry mess because I've enjoyed a better-than-perfect state for so long.

I revisited this story with Ryan a few days ago {because he likes to pick on me and call me "Miss 20/12" anytime I see something before he does} and asked him if he thought they made glasses for people with 20/20 vision. After all, if perfection feels imperfect, what's a girl to do when she gets there?

And then of course, it had to translate into a spiritual application in my mind, because that's how my brain works.

But seriously!

1 Peter 1:15-16 (NIV) says, "Just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do, for it is written: 'Be holy, because I am holy.'"

I remember reading some article years ago that talked about people who were supposed to find counterfeit money didn't actually study counterfeit money to learn what it looked like. They studied real money so that anything that was less than the real deal was obviously counterfeit.

The point of the article was that in order to be more like Christ, you don't focus on what's happening around you in the world and try to figure out how to do better than that. You study Christ and work to become more like Him.

And that's what I thought of with this vision thing. Isn't the goal to keep maturing more and more so that what may have once looked like the height of holy to me might actually be just the start? And not just for me, but for all of us? That we can continue to become more and more like Christ?

There's always learning and growing to do. There are always improvements to make. And I hope to keep pushing to be better than my best - which I know can only ever be done through Him.

This is what I'm learning. Well. This and I shouldn't pursue a degree in optometry.

Press on, my friends!!!