It is funny how certain memories sneak up on you.
Sometimes a smell can catapult you into a memory from
childhood. The smell of crayons does that for me. My grandmother had a pitcher of crayons, you read correctly,
sitting on a desk in a room my cousin, Rachel, and I endearingly referred to as
the “little room” was this yellow pitcher filled with broken crayons. The
moment you opened the lid to the pitcher there was a distinct smell. It resurrects a montage of moments of my
childhood.
My grandmother, Loreen, was a firm believer, first and
foremost in the Lord, and second in no one ever being “bored”. She would foster
creativity within us grandchildren. The Heston side of the family has a
distinct ability to be storytellers. It doesn’t matter what they are talking
about, but once the talking begins you are bated. As young children we were
always encouraged to tell a story. Whether through drawing pictures, making up
songs, writing our own skits, or short stories we were story telling. Mostly
this was rooted in poems. Rachel and I would be given different patterns of
poems to follow. Usually, we were given the same subject on which to write.
Upon finishing our poems we would proudly read them to each other and then to
grandma. Sometimes our grandfather would pull out his early 90’s camcorder,
that was the size of toddler, and film us in our creative space. It would
always amaze me, even as a child, to see how we both took the same thing (i.e.
A bird) and would interpret them differently. We each saw something unique.
Why? I honestly, don’t know. Could it be that we each had a different
perspective on life? Possibly. Does it make the other person’s poem any less
true? No. Beauty is seen and interpreted in many different facets.
I know the things that we look at with our lens of “human
imperfection”, tells a different story then the lens of our heavenly Father. I like to refer to this as “strange
beauty”. It is something that we don’t see possessing or worthy of beauty, but
that the Lord does. Continually, I am asking for God’s eyes and not my own. It
is the same when I ask for God’s love for people and not my own. I know that
God doesn’t fully give me his eyesight and his love because as a human being I
honestly think I would explode. He has taken me into deeper levels of this love
and vision. My body is built out of love and for love. I will continue to ask
for more of his love and more of his eyes. Even though it will be tough for
this human body to retain all of that, how cool would it be for a tombstone to read:
Lindsay Heston
January 29, 1981- (insert date here)
Exploded with the love and eyes of Jesus.
I think that would be
awesome! Maybe that is just my perspective. I will continue to seek out the
strange beauty of the world and speak life and purpose into it. Will you?
