This is one of the last pictures taken of Nate and me before we learned about his deadly diagnosis. I’m thankful for it, since it represents life before terminal cancer. Key word: represents, and an inaccurate representation at that. His life already did include cancer, and as I look at the picture today, I see it there.
Nate’s smile is not his own. Though he’s doing his best, his face can’t hide his physical pain. I didn’t notice it at the time, but today, in hindsight, I see it. Even his posture tells of something unusual going on by the stiff way he’s putting his arm around me, something that had always been easy.
I remember that picture-taking moment well. Relatives from North Carolina were visiting, and we’d just finished a lavish brunch at my sister and brother-in-law’s home. Even during the meal, Nate had had to get out of his chair and stand behind it to “take a break” from the back stress of sitting. “It feels better if I stand,” he had said. But a backache isn’t cancer, and we’d already known about that. After all, he was already scheduled for corrective spine surgery.
But hindsight is 20/20, and because I now know what we were about to learn then, I look at the picture and see it coming. But on picture-taking day, we were still blissfully ignorant of that life and death crisis, which in a sense left us standing in a place of blessing.
But what about the pictures that are being taken now, during these days? Not knowing what’s ahead, when I smile for a camera do I acknowledge that I’m currently standing in a place of blessing? Am I appreciating that I’m not in a life and death crisis today?
God has ongoing 20/20 vision both in hindsight and foresight. He sees the complete lifeline of everybody at all times rather than looking at each of us one way this year and another way the next. He has no regrets about what he has allowed to happen to each of us and can’t think of a single change he might have made to how he’s acted in the past. He doesn’t want to redo any decision he’s made and never thinks, “I wish I’d done such-and-such back then.”
In other words, he’s the complete opposite of us.
I’ll never have 20/20 vision toward the future like God does, but I can learn a few things through my 20/20 vision backwards. And what I’ve learned today from studying this picture is how important it is to acknowledge, in the here and now, that I’m standing in a place of blessing.
“Always be zealous for the fear of the Lord. There is surely a future hope for you.” (Proverbs 23:17-18)
