We see through a lens — always.
I’ve gone to three weddings this summer. They were most beautiful with their fresh white table cloths, hanging cafe lights, layered cakes and dancing bridal parties, at the edge of the good life, perhaps — and perhaps also — at the edge of what is absolutely and stupifyingly terrifying.
At each lovely wedding, the bride was filled with hope, the groom most proud. She had found someone who loves her. He had found the one within the one of the most holy one. And I hoped with them, and felt proud with them. It was happening again. The beautiful life I have lived was happening again — to them.
What lies ahead for these new, hopeful voyagers? What lies ahead as they peer into the clear, bright future through clean, freshly crafted, personal lenses? For them, the greatest adventure is what lies ahead, but it is also in what lies behind what lies ahead. What lies behind what lies ahead is them, their family history, the things that have influenced them, their DNA and their choices.
Ahead they will see perfect little baby girls and boys — perhaps; a new home in a good school district — perhaps; beautiful vacations in beautiful places — perhaps; good jobs and needed income — perhaps; a deeply maturing love and acceptance — perhaps; but also, just perhaps, they may find disability and disfigurement — perhaps; spousal betrayal — perhaps; loss of jobs and income — perhaps; unimaginably broken moments on cracked and broken floors — just perhaps.
I so hope not. God have mercy! Christ have mercy!
But this is for sure: youth is the lens which time will bend.
In beauty and in its loss, and in hope and in disappointment, in sickness and in health we all will live and more and have our hyper-definitive, super-retentive and revised-inventive being.
And time will bend the lens.
My hope, for myself and for all of my gorgeous, smooth-skinned, shinning-hair, bright-eyed lovelies is that age may increase magnification — and gentleness.
Thrive! 