New Vision

I am not a visionary person...I am too literal...too concrete...I am a visual person...meaning that I cannot envision a thing very easily...I need to actually see it....  therefore I buy things and return them..and buy more things and return them too....I think when I see something at the store that it will work perfectly in my setting....match exactly...fit well...but often I am wrong, my vision is not all that clear...when I see it actually in the setting...with the dress..etc..it isn't right....maybe even just a bit off...but rarely does it work perfectly....this is often silly and sometimes totally annoying with sweaters and shoes...but downright scary with big things like carpet colors or counter top purchases. 
Of late we have been looking to purchase a sofa....a big huge sofa that has to be custom ordered and cannot be returned...and I have ideas about what I like and what I want and what will create the "look" I'm going for...but face it.. for me, it is an overwhelming and daunting task...my thoughts are jumbled...I have a general direction...but is that even the right thing....and its too big and too expensive to mess up!

 So there we sit...my husband and I...on our old sofa pouring over pictures online and trying to see size and depth and skirt height and arm width...did I mention that my husband is visionary...he always has been...in every way; from direction for our lives to fashion prediction to sports team choices to the world of the spiritually prophetic...he is a visionary...and that gift applies to everything.  He can just simply "see".

It is as it says in Roms 11:29

"For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance."   So I look and look...and try to convey to my visionary husband what I sort of see...what I think I want to see...but am viewing very much through a glass darkly.... In a while...we sort of narrow things down and I think he is beginning to understand what I think I want. We have even found a picture or two that sort of kind of looks like it....maybe...the one with square arms and boxy cushions....or maybe I like that other one we saw with the round arms and puffy cushions....Ack! Then just when I am growing frustrated and overwhelmed and think we will never sort it all out...suddenly he says to me....look at the picture....now look around our room.....now....close your eyes and see that sofa in this room..... And suddenly....I can see it!  I can see it in my mind's eye...and now I can decide if it looks right...if it is what I really was thinking to start with or if I want a different direction completely. He has helped me and shown me how to see.   This is also a gift my husband has....he can take my jumbled ideas and focus them...and refocus them until I can see clearly what my own thoughts and ideas were in the first place...he sharpens the view for me...putting the pieces together until things become clear..or at least clearer. He helps to clarify my vision... And low and behold...I may see exactly what I was looking for or even something totally unexpected...but it is so exciting to really "see"!   I think the Lord has a way of doing this as well...sharpening and focusing our view until we see exactly what he wanted to show us all along...often using the very thing we were looking at to start with but clarifying it, adjusting it until it is distinctly clear.  He gives us new vision....  and it is so exciting to see!   Mark 8:23-25 And He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town, and when he had spit on his eyes, and put His hands upon him,  He asked him if he saw ought. And he looked up and said, I see men as trees, walking... after that He put his hands again upon his eyes and made him look up:  and he was restored, and saw every man clearly.