Glued Glasses and Sewed Jackets

The longer I live the more I see that our souls’ eyes and the world’s eyes aren’t the same. Just today, for instance, I was sitting at my kitchen table when suddenly my soul’s memories took me back 13 years in an instant. I remembered sitting at that same table getting out a needle and thread to sew a rip in my jacket. It was one of many gotten from years of working in a lumber mill. That day, however, was my day off and I was enjoying every moment of it with my kids.

Suddenly my toddler climbed on my knee for a game of "blow on my belly". His giggles tickled my soul but his arm also accidently knocked off my glasses, breaking the frames for the hundredth time that year. At that time money was tight, miracle glue was cheap, and new glasses were not. I put my son down then, glued and reset the frames, and set them on the table to dry. Sewing the jacket without my glasses, though, was no easy task. On my thirtieth try at threading the needle my little daughter came in the room. I asked her if she could put the thread through the eye for me. She did on the first try and handed it back to me with a smile. "There you go, Daddy!", she said with sparkling eyes before heading back to her room to play.

I often wondered back then why I was having to struggle so hard just to get by. I wondered why I didn’t have the money to buy the new clothes and glasses that others took for granted. Now thirteen years later I think that maybe God was having my soul spend that time learning what the true riches in life really are. That giggling toddler in my arms was one of them. That loving daughter with the sparkling eyes was another. Compared to them all the money in the world was just worthless paper. Nowadays money doesn’t seem quite so important, but every loving hug I get from one of my children remains priceless. These lessons in love sometimes take a lifetime to learn, but what’s a lifetime when seen from the eternal eyes of your soul.

~ Joseph J. Mazzella ~

[ by: Joseph J. Mazzella Copyright © 2009 (joecool@wirefire.com) -- submitted by: Joseph Mazzella ]