(Be Thou My) Vision

Last year, right before the total knee replacement, I had LASIK surgery. (Yes, I am bionic.) Before surgery, I had 20/400 vision--that means what I could see at 20 feet, someone with 20/20 vision could see at 400 feet. It was bad. Now I have 20/20. I wear reading glasses, but that's just a part of the aging process. However, just because I have 20/20 vision, doesn't mean I can always see.

Part of my job while riding shotgun with Tim in Yellowstone was being the spotter. He too, was looking for wildlife, but he had to pay attention to the curvy, mountain roads as he scanned the fields. Tim is an observer. He is really good at noticing things. When we were first married, and we were driving someplace together, he would point out red-tailed hawks along the way--they were in trees, 200 yards away, on telephone poles, street signs...I know that the red-tailed hawk population did not dramatically increase when we got married; I'd just never noticed them before. To this day, he can scan a field of clover and find a four-leaved one in under a minute. I was amazed and asked him how he did it. For a long time, he would just grin that grin and hand me the lucky charm. After dozens of finds, I pressed for his secret. He told me, "I just look for something that looks different...out of place." It takes me a lot longer, but now I can usually find one if I look hard enough.

But Yellowstone is expansive. When trying to spot wildlife, there are 3,468 square miles to cover. Sometimes the animal is right in front of you...no really, I mean crossing-the-road-you-have-to-stop-or-you'll-hit-a-two-thousand-pound-buffalo right in front of you. Those guys are impossible to miss. But sometimes, it's like the black wolf and the gray wolf.

Thursday, right before our crazy encounter with Kathy Gibbons, Tim and I were sitting in the car "looking" at the wolves. I put looking in quotation marks because Tim was seeing them; I just continued to get frustrated. With my 20/20 vision and a great pair of binoculars, I could not see what everyone else lined up on the side of the road could see. I was seeing the landmarks (the big clump of pines, the little pine to the right, in the middle of the field, and the discolored grass, right below it and to the right), that were being pointed out--they were obvious...but not the wolves. Tim would say, "Oh, one just popped his head up." He was looking through his telephoto lens, but it was not nearly as powerful as the binoculars. He could see them with much poorer "vision."

He tried. He tried with everything in him to help me find those wolves, but for whatever reason, I just couldn't spot them. At that point, I was mumbling under my voice, "Are you kidding me? I can't believe I can't see them." Tim was coming close to losing his patience, but we were still laughing about it. We ran into Kathy, I got out of the car, and by that time, I was no longer mumbling. I was now openly verbalizing my disgust, "I still can't see them!" as Kathy quickly spotted one. It was not from lack of effort that I could not see those wolves. I was trying my hardest. I wish I could tell you there was a trick...something that helped me see...but there wasn't...it just happened. I saw the little spot that everyone was talking about. I took their word for it that it was a wolf, because I could not see any distinguishing features that would identify that little blip as a wolf. It was much, much smaller than I expected. And I believe that most people who were seeing the wolves were seeing what I was seeing, they were just trusting the guys with the gigantic spotter scopes that they were seeing a wolf. These guys were experts. They had these super-sensitive optical wonders that did allow the person looking to see all the details that helped them identify the animal accurately. These folks set up at the break of dawn scanning the expansive, open field for any sign of the wolves. They always saw the animals first, then happily helped the others who would begin to gather, find the blips that were thousands of yards away.

Another funny thing about vision--sometimes your eyes can play tricks on you. We would be driving along, and either Tim or I would urgently state, "There! I see...wait...never mind." We wanted so badly, to see a bear, or a moose that every dark stump, rock, limb, or branch looked like whatever we thought we should be seeing in that area.

We talk about vision at school all the time. Are we as leaders casting a vision that teachers, parents, and students can see and believe in? It's part of our job--to help others see what can be.

But really, we are short-sighted...all of us. Those wolves were there, I just couldn't see them. And if I had to guess, there were animals that we drove right past and completely missed...right in front of our eyes. But we're blind, we humans. We have a Guide who sees the wolves who continues to whisper in our ear--there they are, right there. We have a Guidebook complete with landmarks, but sometimes, in spite of that, we don't see, or we try to see what's not there, because we want to see it so badly.

I did finally see the wolves. (And aren't they often the hardest to see?) I kept listening. I kept referencing the landmarks, and I kept watching. I kept my eyes on hills...