lost sight

FROM "A LESSON LEARNED"
Last week, I kept Elia (my niece) for an entire week while her parents took their youth group to church camp! It was a ton of fun and I especially loved having a little girl around the house! The last thing I expected, though, was for my beautiful 4-year-old niece to teach me a life lesson. On Friday of Elia's visit, I took the kids to a movie at the theater in Bricktown. We arrived at the movie, bought our tickets, stocked up on snacks and then found our seats! The kids were excited to see a movie (and, of course, have movie theater pop corn) and, let's face it, I was excited to sit in the dark for a couple hours with the kids focused on the big screen and not on who took who's toy or on how bored they are and how they "can't find anything to do"! I had spent the whole week entertaining them and we needed the next two hours as semi-quiet, snacking downtime! The movie started and it was awesome! The kids were laughing, I was enjoying my popcorn and the world was good...and then it happened. The movie screen started to flicker and a moment later it went totally black! OH NO!!!! The theater was FULL of little kids who, at this point, were almost done eating their popcorn and now...NO MOVIE!! Yikes!! Of course, you could immidiately hear all the little kids in the theater asking their mom's "what happened" "I can't see the movie" and mom's in return were answering with "they'll fix it" "it'll be back on in just a minute". A few minutes later with still no movie the kids were getting even more restless. Finally, a theater employee came into the room and said that they were working on the problem and it would be fixed in about 10 minutes! Whoa! At that point, kids started having to go potty and so mom's were getting up and moving around. Older kids began chatting with each other and younger kids began roaming up and down the aisles. Suddenly, the lights in the theater dimmed again and we thought the movie was going to resume. Unfortunately, though, instead of the movie actually coming back on only the movie sound came on and the screen remained dark. Again, the questions from all the kids across the theater began. With the lights off and only the sounds of the movie coming through, Elia, who was sitting right next to me began to get scared. She said the sounds were scaring her and that she wanted the movie to come back on. I did my best to reassure her that everything would be OK and that we should be able to see the movie any minute. Sure enough, just a few minutes later the movie picture flickered on and we could finally finish our morning movie!
Lesson Learned? As we sat in the dark movie theater, hearing only the sounds of the movie but not seeing the picture, Elia got scared. The movie music, combined with the characters voices and the dark room made her feel like something bad must be happening. Now, you have to know that we were seeing the movie "Clifford the Big Red Dog". Absolutely, positively NOTHING scary happens in that movie. NOTHING! It's a kiddie movie to the nth degree! I think I may have seen scarier things on Sesame Street! Ha! As soon, though, as the movie picture joined the sound all of Elia's fears fell away and she was happy and content to watch the rest of the movie and even laugh at the funny parts! Suddenly, the "scariness" was gone! In that moment, seeing Elia go from truly frightened to her fear disappearing as the movie screen flickered back to life, I knew that we all do this in life. Life throws us curve balls. Things happen that we never expected or even dreamed about. Sometimes the screen of life flickers out for a minute or two...or longer. We suddenly can't see what's coming up next. We are being reassured that the picture will be back soon and to just "sit tight" and everything will be OK. But that is much easier said then done. To make matters worse, when we lose sight, we are often hearing things that sound so very scary. Whether we receive bad news or simply can't make sense of the rumors we are hearing we imagine things to be much worse then they really are. When Elia could hear the sounds of the kids movie but not see the screen she got scared. Remember, though, this was the movie Clifford the Big Red Dog and nothing frightening was happening. In fact, once the picture came back on to match the sound it turned out that the portion of the movie we were hearing was actually quite funny! But without the picture her imagination was running away with her and she thought things were happening that really weren't. WE ALL DO THIS IN LIFE!! We hear things. We imagine things. We think the worst and assume that not only is something scary happening but we freak out and forget what movie we're actually watching. Suddenly we're picturing horror scenes and have trouble being reassured by those who know what is going on that everything actually will be OK. When the big screen in life goes out and the sounds coming through the speakers sound scary and unsure and you have no idea what is going on or coming up next just sit tight. The theater employee is right...he's working on it and in about ten minutes everything will come back on and you'll realize that what you were freaking out about is nothing! In fact, it may actually be humurous! Don't worry! Don't freak out! Don't even be scared! Just stay where you are, keep munching on your popcorn and know that someone else is worrying about the problem so you don't have to!