Seeing Things Differently
Do you remember being a kid and looking through one of those little toys where you could change the color of the lens? You’d hold it up to your eye, switch to red, and suddenly everything looked red. Switch it to blue, and the whole world looked blue.
Nothing around you had actually changed.
The only thing that changed was what you were looking through.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately and how much that can relate to marriage.
Sometimes what we see in our marriage has a lot to do with the filter we’re looking through.
If I’m looking through the lens of stress, even the smallest things can suddenly feel bigger than they really are.
If I’m looking through the lens of comparison, I can start looking at what someone else’s marriage appears to be and questioning what ours isn’t.
If I’m looking through the lens of disappointment, I can become so focused on what didn’t happen the way I wanted it to that I miss everything that is good right in front of me.
But the opposite is true too.
When I look through the lens of gratitude, I see the man who has walked beside me through some of the greatest and hardest moments of my life.
When I look through the lens of grace, I remember that we’re both imperfect people learning, growing and figuring out life together.
And sometimes, changing the way we see something can change everything—even when the situation itself hasn’t changed.
Yesterday, Antwon and I celebrated 13 years of marriage.
And maybe one of the biggest things marriage has taught me in those 13 years is that sometimes you have to be willing to change the lens.
“For better or for worse” doesn’t always mean that one season is better and another is worse. Sometimes it means learning to see the same situation from a different perspective.
It’s realizing that two people can be standing in the exact same situation and see it completely differently.
My perspective isn’t automatically the right one just because it’s mine.
Sometimes loving your spouse means being willing to look through their lens. To try to understand what they see, why they see it that way and what you might be missing from where you’re standing.
And if I’m being completely transparent, after 13 years of marriage, I’m still learning how to do that.
But over the last few years, the idea of seeing things through Antwon’s lens has taken on a much more literal meaning.
Before I share this part, I want to say that I’m sharing it with Antwon’s permission. I’m a pretty open person and don’t mind sharing my own experiences, but I don’t believe in sharing someone else’s personal business without their consent—even when their story is intertwined with mine. This is his diagnosis and his experience, and I wanted to make sure he was comfortable with me sharing this part of our story.
After nearly two years of searching for answers about changes in his vision, we finally got one.
Antwon was diagnosed with cone dystrophy.
One of the biggest challenges with his condition is extreme sensitivity to light. The best way I can describe what he has explained to me is that when too much light enters his eyes, everything can almost become washed out in white. Even something as simple as trying to see something on a white background can be incredibly difficult.
Since his diagnosis, there has been a lot of trial and error.
Different glasses. Different colored lenses. Filtered contacts. Trying one thing and then another to figure out what helps him see best in different situations.
And suddenly, that little colored lens I played with as a child has a completely different meaning to me.
For us, it was fun to see the world in a different color for a few minutes.
Then we could put it down.
For Antwon, sometimes seeing more clearly means looking at the world through a colored lens.
I can only imagine how frustrating that must be sometimes. To have something help you see more clearly while also changing the colors of what you see.
I can’t fully understand what that feels like because I’m not the one experiencing it.
But somewhere along this journey, I realized that while Antwon has literally had to learn how to see the world differently, this experience has taught both of us to look at life through a different lens.
Things I once considered ordinary don’t feel quite as ordinary anymore.
Being able to sit outside and watch our boys play.
Taking a walk and seeing the green of the trees, the blue of the sky or the changing colors of the leaves.
Looking across the room and seeing the faces of the people you love.
Getting in the car and driving wherever you need to go without giving it a second thought.
Reading something on a white piece of paper or looking at a screen without having to think about the background, brightness or lighting around you.
These are things most of us experience every day without ever stopping to consider what a gift they are.
I know I did.
We spend so much of our lives looking ahead.
The next vacation. The next promotion. The next milestone. The next house project. The next season when things will hopefully slow down.
Meanwhile, life is happening right in front of us.
Our kids are growing.
The seasons are changing.
The people we love are getting older.
And there is so much beauty happening in the middle of an ordinary day that we can completely miss because we’re already looking toward what’s next.
Maybe seeing life differently means paying attention to what’s right in front of us.
Watch your kids play.
Look at the sunset.
Notice the colors of the trees.
Take the picture.
Take the walk.
Sit a little longer.
Tell the people you love that you love them.
Thank God for things you’ve never thought to thank Him for before.
Because life can change the lens without asking our permission.
And sometimes what we once saw one way suddenly looks completely different.
Maybe that’s what this season has been teaching me.
You don’t always get to choose what life puts in front of you.
But you can choose the lens through which you look at it.
I can rush through another ordinary day—or I can recognize that being able to see my boys playing, my husband sitting beside me and the colors outside my window is a gift.
I can focus on what’s difficult—or I can still look for what is good.
And I can spend all my time trying to see what’s coming next—or I can thank God for what He has placed right in front of me.
Maybe we don’t always need a different view.
Sometimes we just need a different lens.
And maybe that’s what it means to learn to see things differently.
