A New View:Thursday's Reflection

A week or so ago I read a suggestion in a home decor blog to hang a string of white lights somewhere inside your home to add coziness to the space. I decided to do just that around the garret's window frame. My desk faces this window, and I sensed adding the lights would not just make the space even cozier, but would even change the view. 

When the package arrived, Bruce delivered it to me in my garret, wondering what I had ordered. He thought the idea was a bit silly, but I invited him to sit in my desk chair to see what I see.

Garage shingles.

I think he was quite surprised actually. 

Before replacing the tiny single car garage with this new double garage, I could see beyond the alley to the next street. I could see the neighbor's backyard garden and majestic trees. I could see occasional traffic, and I enjoyed feeling part of the neighborhood even though I was in my quiet, solitary space. I am not unhappy about our new garage and in fact, give thanks for it each time I drive into it. Nor do I regret the design, which includes an upstairs with permanent stairs. A great place for easy storage. 

However, I do miss my former view. 

True, during the spring I can see the branches from the neighbor's flowering tree bending over our fence, and yesterday I could see the shadows of those bare branches. And when it snows I can see squirrel tracks on the roof or the patterns of melting frost as the day warms. But most days what I see are grey-brown shingles. A wall of them. 

Bruce sat in my desk chair, and for the first time he understood. 

I decided to change my view, to change what I see, and I added the lights. They not only add a new dimension to the window and frame what I see in a new way, but they remind me to be the light, to give light. I need that reminder most days.

They remind me that I can do something small--the lights cost $6.99, and they took me five minutes, if that, to hang--to add light to what I do, who I am, and what I see.

I can't change the fact that the garage is there or that no one, including me, thought about how the garage would change the view, but I can choose to work with what is.

The first morning I walked up the stairs and plugged them in, I felt lighter. They frame the darkness and bring more light into my world. 

An Invitation

What can you do to bring more light into the world? What can you do to change what you see and how you see? I would love to know. 

(I wrote thoughts about light and even mentioned this happy string of lights in one of my posts last week. Read here. )