TO SEE WITH NEW EYES.

Tuesday morning, tiptoed into my daughter's home. The home where just yesterday my seventh grandchild and fifth grandson was born, just minutes before I arrived that early Monday morning. All was well and peace reigned. There before me lay a quarter-hour-old babe

wrapped in a towel. A towel I had seen on bare bottoms coming from the tub, now over the bare and brand new of the world. He lay so softly as he left his mother's breast. He barely moved but to breathe and show his arms from the swaddle where he lay. It was once again brand new.


Now to Tuesday..I come to help and spend time with the other tots that sit at their breakfast table, ready for the new day. Still in their pajamas, life going on, baby brother sleeps close by.

Today though there will be a milestone of enormous proportions. I will gaze upon his gaze. He will open his eyes and I will be there. Eyes innocent and deep blue that they say cannot actually see what they are "staring" at. Yet he stares. I stare back and it occurs to me, "I wonder what it's like to see for the first time, to have no idea what you have before you, to have no real frame of reference? Nothing to blur your vision, no preconceived notion. What does innocence actually 'SEE'?



That wonder remained all week and each time I held him, like I had each grand baby before, I just wanted to look into his eyes,to take him in, to give him the chance to take me in, this body with no name just yet, this one named Marmee, how do we bond so quickly? But this time it occurred to me...how do we "SEE"? What lens do we use to stare into someone?



What does it take for us to truly gaze into a person's being? Gauge the situation? How hard is it to walk over our preconceived notions, the word from others, our own personal experience, the communication mega flood? Babies have none of that. They are able to monitor a small area that enlarges daily. They are registering what they hear and feel with senses that are completely pure. Watch their little faces when their mother or their daddy speaks to them...it's undeniable..they know them, but how?


With all my heart I believe that we all still have this pure ability to "SEE". The many forms of visual and audible communication are no substitute for what our spirits are able to show us. This is not mystical, or weird. It's who were meant to be....to hear the heart of God who wants to put within us all His great love for us, His deep desire to care for us, help us, comfort and calm us. He will help us to see like a babe if we just ask and believe the vision we once relied on, the newborn kind, is able to be restored. Able to be used in all areas where we find ourselves needy...I know I have many of those.


Just like the innocence of an infant, we are just as vulnerable. Able to be hungry, hurt. Needing to be comforted, protected, warmed and cleaned, nurtured...loved. Here we now stand...farther along in the process of age...walking upright...talking, smelling, hearing, ingesting. We are just older babies and we can see with new eyes....if we just will.


"as it is written:

'no eye has seen,

no ear has heard,

no mind conceived

what God has prepared for

those who love Him'



but God has revealed it to us by

His Spirit.

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.

For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him?

In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

We have not received the spirit of the world but

the Spirit who is from God,

that we may understand what God has freely given to us.


I Corinthians 2:9-12 NIV