Through Magic Eyes

Lewis Smede opens his book Forgive and Forget with a fable about seeing through magic eyes:


"In the village of Faken in innermost Friesland there lived a long thin baker name Fouke, a righteous man, with a long thin chin and a long thin nose. Fouke was so upright that he seemed to spray righteousness from his thin lips over everyone who came near him; so the people of Faken preferred to stay away. 

Fouke's wife, Hilda, was short and round, her arms were round, her bosom was round, her rump was round. Hilda did not keep people at bay with righteousness; her soft roundness seemed to invite them instead to come close to her in order to share the warm cheer of her open heart.

Hilda respected her righteous husband, and loved him too, as much as he allowed her; but her heart ached for something more from him than his worthy righteousness. 

And there, in the bed of her need, lay the seed of sadness. 

One morning, having worked since dawn to knead his dough for the ovens, Fouke came home and found a stranger in his bedroom lying on Hilda's round  bosom. 

Hilda's adultery soon became the talk of the tavern and the scandal of the Faken congregation. Everyone assumed that Fouke would cast Hilda out of his house, so righteous was he. But he surprised everyone by keeping Hilda as his wife, saying he forgave her as the Good Book said he should. 

In his heart of hearts, however, Fouke could not forgive Hilda for bringing shame to his name. Whenever he thought about her, his feelings toward her were angry and hard; he despised her as if she were a common whore. When it came right down to it, he hated her for betraying him after he had been so good and so 
faithful a husband to her. 

He only pretended to forgive Hilda so that he could punish her with his righteous mercy. 

But Fouke's fakery did not sit well in heaven. 

So each time that Fouke would feel his secret hated toward Hilda, an angel came to him and dropped a small pebble, hardly the size of a shirt button, into Fouke's heart. Each time a pebble dropped, Fouke would feel a stab of pain like the pain he felt the moment he came on Hilda feeding her hungry heart from a 
stranger's larder. 

Thus he hated her the more; his hate brought him pain and his pain made him hate. 

The pebbles multiplied. And Fouke's heart grew very heavy with the weight of them, so heavy that the top half of his body bent forward so far that he had to strain his neck upward in order to see straight ahead.

Weary with hurt, Fouke began to wish he were dead. 

The angel who dropped the pebbles into his heart came to Fouke one night and told him how he could be healed of his hurt. 

There was one remedy, he said, only one, for the hurt of a wounded heart. Fouke would need the miracle of the magic eyes. He would need eyes that could  look back to the beginning of his hurt and see his Hilda, not as a wife who betrayed him, but as a weak woman who needed him. Only a new way of looking at things 
through the magic eyes could heal the hurt flowing from the wounds of yesterday. 

Fouke protested. "Nothing can change the past," he said. "Hilda is guilty, a fact that not even an angel can change." 

"Yes, poor hurting man, you are right," the angel said. "You cannot change the past, you can only heal the hurt that comes to you from the past. And you can heal it only with the vision of the magic eyes." 

"And how can I get your magic eyes?" pouted Fouke. 

"Only ask, desiring as you ask, and they will be given you. And each time you see Hilda through your new eyes, one pebble will be lifted from your aching heart." 

Fouke could not ask at once, for he had grown to love his hatred. But the pain of his heart finally drove him to want and to ask for the magic eyes that the angel had promised. So he asked. And the angle gave. 

Soon Hilda began to change in front of Fouke's eyes, wonderfully and mysteriously. He began to see her as a needy woman who loved him instead of a wicked woman who betrayed him. 

The angel kept his promise; he lifted the pebbles from Fouke's heart, one by one, though it took a long time to take them all away. Fouke gradually felt his heart grow lighter; he began to walk straight again, and somehow his nose and his chin seemed less thin and sharp than before. He invited Hilda to come into his heart again, and she came, and together they began again a journey into their second season of humble joy."

This is a powerful allegory of how hurt, hatred and unforgiveness weigh us down one tiny pebble at at time. Becoming aware of the pebbles in our heart allows us the opportunity to ask for them to be removed instead of being weighed down indefinitely with a cause we couldn't recognize. 

Kathryn asked me Friday if I had less pebbles since the last time we had met. And I gave her every answer. Yes, no, maybe, I don't know... Then settled on this answer, "I am more aware of the pebbles." Being aware of the stones in my heart helps me identify them and work to remove them. Some, of course, are only removed by God's hand. While others, can be plucked out myself. And others yet are being removed by those around me. Naming the pebbles can be quite challenging. Some of them have grown roots. Some are large stones and one is a large stone with roots that wrap around me so tightly I cannot identify the end, yet. 

My life is changing. The pain and weights of my past are slowly, but surely, coming loose. Yesterday at church, after Shawn preached, I was overcome with emotion (not my favorite thing). I am astounded that God would call someone as broken and messed up as me to serve His Kingdom. I am shocked that God still wants to work on me even though so much needs to be different. I am surprised that Amy and Michelle were there surrounding me with love and prayers as I walked through some thoughts and feelings and struggles of letting my life be changed... I am not having an easy time explaining myself right now and for that I do apologize. What I guess I am trying to say is that God desires to remove all the junk from our hearts, making us light and free, whole and complete in Him. But in order to do this we must make a decision to change, ask to be changed and then live the decision daily. It isn't likely to happen all at once. It is likely to hurt like crazy and take a really long time, but it will be worth it.