Walking a Tightrope

When we feel like we are walking a Tightrope through life, we miss the point. When trying to wrestle with making the masses happy, balancing time with our kids and spouse, figure out how much time our work should take and then a complexity added of how spiritual to be and when and how to do right and not wrong and when to say what and when to not talk, the tightrope under our feet gets skinnier and the distance beneath us is greater to fall.

And people fall from it all the time. People, sadly, believe that is all there is and lose hope and fall. And that is the saddest thing ever because they have clearly missed the point. And maybe that is why we weird big picture people exist, to remind you of the big picture.

Sure, we are weird. I own that and have never cared what people thought of me because of the big picture thing. Yes, I miss a lot of the details so I miss a lot, but here is the thing. I am good at at least one thing, seeing and showing the big picture. And here it is. This is huge and if you grasp it, your tightrope will suddenly turn into a wide bridge over a trench.

Accepting Jesus Christ as Savior is all about grace and putting God first.

If you really embrace that, your life will instantly be brighter and load lighter. Guilt loads will dump off to God’s forgiveness. Loneliness will disappear because God comforts and fills you up with thr Holy Spirit, a constant companion with warm arms and power when needs be. And balancing everything becomes easy as He gives abundant wisdom when we put Him first. And reading thr Bible and praying keeps our connection to God strong and bonds the relationship so peace and joy is forever right there no matter what.

No need to walk a tightrope, just need to see the big picture and embrace it. Then wow, that grace takes over and perfection is no longer required, just devotion. Wow! Freedom! Hope!😄❤

The Devil is in the Details

I am not by nature organized or detail-oriented. I am a big picture person. This means that I miss a lot. I get the overall view and fully realize it and love it dearly. The details I can overlook so naturally and so easily that I appear flaky or sometimes pretty dumb. However, I must say that I am not bogged down by details. Details are either the death of me (because I miss so much and exasperate my detail-oriented husband) or the life of me (in that the details don’t stress me out or keep me standing in one place). Either way, it is what it is and God made me to be a visionary, big picture person. I have to accept this as okay, for good or bad. Those who would love me would need to do the same. I accept the detail friends and family of mine. True, we see things quite differently and certainly often oppositely. I still love them and hope they return the sentiment. Often seeming to come from opposite planets, we need each other to make it. Detailers need our big picture to not get lost in the trees and big picturers need detailers to keep them grounded. It is how we are cut. God knows what He is doing and together we can accomplish amazing things!!

A Day in the Life of a Visionary

When my day starts, I get up and thank God for the great day and walk the dog, thinking how amazing things look in the morning and how peaceful everything that God made is before everyone is up and about. I look at the sky, the clouds, the trees, focus is upwards. I will randomly look around and notices changes in the neighbor’s yard. Later when I mention it to my detail-oriented husband, he tells me that change I just noticed has been there for a week or more. It then amazes me both that he noticed it right away, that he noticed it and didn’t mention it to me and that I completely missed such an obvious thing. You see visionaries have a sincerely difficult time seeing the trees within the forest, whereas non visionaries often cannot see the forest through the trees. We visionaries are focused on the big picture and it requires great effort to attend to details or sometimes even to see them at all. Detail people amaze me because they notice everything and often keep these amazing discoveries under wraps. If I’d have noticed half that stuff, I would be so much in wonder at having been a part of so much daily life and living that I would tell everyone. I could never handle all that information. Those who can simply amaze me. I value people around me who can do easily what takes me a great deal of effort and concentration. Throughout the day I fumble and spill a lot (so have a lot is stained or torn clothes) because I’m focused on what has to happen in the next few hour, rest of the day and tomorrow for my goal to be attained. For example, I will forget that I just bleached the whites and lean over with my burgundy shirt and now have a white streak across my shirt because I was thinking of what I was making the kids for lunch. The here and now tends to allude me unless I am very purposeful. I have to click the planning off and decide to be in the present. I can do that pretty easily but I still have to do it on purpose. But when I am in the moment, I am all in. When I am in the future mode, I am all in too. In the details, I have to force myself and even then it is very difficult to retain my focus on it. I worked at a bank for a year of grad school. It almost drove me insane. Counting money and arranging bills to all face the same way and documenting every transaction on a different line and giving a separate piece of paper for every single transaction. I had to go running after work and then watch a movie to feel normal again. However, I could picture whole worlds and imaginary places and put myself there and believe it really could happen. I see what could be, see beyond the here and now. I can see the finished picture, how it will be, how it would be if we did certain things. The getting there from here and every step and ingredients required is not part of how the mind works. For that, I need people in my life that care enough to balance me and tend to the details. I can see the song and need help putting the notes together. I see the movie in my head already completed but need help with staging, set decoration, camera crews, special effects, transportation, etc. I sincerely believe Jesus Christ when He said that we can do anything with Him. There is no natural part of me that does not embrace that as truth. Anything can be done. How requires help from someone with detail savvy, and I believe that each other person alive also can do absolutely anything with God’s help. So, not only do I need help to appreciate a completed project, I firmly believe in my supportive friends even beyond what they believe in themselves. I noticed some of my detail friends are so good at noticing everything that they need me to help them do something with that and live life fuller. It is beautiful to see the little subtleties but they can become a distraction to where you focus on them and what might be out of kilter so much that you miss enjoyment out of just taking a huge breath and enjoying the experience of living right now and appreciating it as a part of God’s big picture. I, conversely, can forget that I haven’t changed my clothes after working in the yard before going out. I can appear sloppy. I do not intend to, it just comes naturally. Many of my detail friends won’t show themselves unless they are nearly perfect. Perfect exhausts me. Perfect, quite frankly, bores me. I want messy and natural and smelly. Then you know you are alive and living this amazing life God created you for. So, this is a peek into the life of a visionary, aka big picture person. I hope it has not been too random to appreciate. It is one of God’s many blessings and gifts to us to have diversity. How boring would life be if we were all exactly the same. I respect my detail oriented friends so much for their amazing abilities and I hope to promote acceptance of our faults to the goodness and benefits lying in the cracks of vision minded people. God allows us to compliment each other and work together for the good of His kingdom. Praise God!

Big Picture

My goal is to help find the forest through all the trees. Sometimes, we need someone along side us to lovingly say, “It really doesn’t matter.” For instance, I was asked not to play the piano for a church one time because I was wearing shorts. They were very modest and clean, but that did not seem to matter. That is one of an enormous variety of examples where it really doesn’t matter. The big picture is that if souls can be saved, do it. If God can be lifted up and glorified, do it. What people are wearing, unless it is immodest or provocative in any way, doesn’t matter. What someone drives doesn’t matter in the big picture. What color or lack of it their hair or nails are really doesn’t matter. So, in the big picture, what matters? Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so. Jesus matters, especially where His love for us is concerned to provide a way to be saved and restored to our great Creator God and live with Him in perfect form forever. This life, in all of it’s little details and meanderings only matters insomuch as it leads us along that big picture path. The big picture path, silly from worldly perspective and down right narrow minded from many many perspectives, is really all that matters. We need to be saved and restored, we can be saved and restored and Jesus is the way to do it. That is it, folks. It doesn’t matter the details in the denominations or the details of the paint colors of the church. If you aren’t looking at the big picture with all of us fellow Jesus Christ followers, there can be no unity or revival we so desperately need. If we share and spread the simple big picture path, we will see the right changes happen to restore us to God, and in doing so restore our country to its former glory. Where the Christ followers go, so goes the nation.