The Girl with the Red Glasses

This earth is a pretty depressing place to live. People you went to high school with commit murder. Other people get sick. The sight of snow melting is one of the most disheartening sights ever because what two days ago was a glimpse of hope falling from the sky is now a half-here/half-gone view of cleanliness and pureness dissipating and you can't make it stay. 

All I can think about during winter, aka the cold version of Hell, is how cold I am. I am very much not an eskimo. 

Winter makes me think I'm losing my personality. The semester just started, so I'm not supposed to be bored yet, but all I seem to ever do is go to class, study, occasionally sleep, eat quiche, and sometimes work out (but more often, I just wear workout clothes and then decide not to actually do it). 

What if a little fraction of my spunkiness dies every time a skin cell dies? That's kind of often. What if I'm turning into a grownup: the boring kind? I feel bland. I feel blasé. I feel immature and trivial. The world has lately been beating me down big-time.

You know how light is technically the absence of color? Or how silence is the absence of sound? Winter is the same as the absence of joy. It's as if someone took my happy life full of in-season mangoes, Chacos, sunshine, and inner warmth and vacuumed all of those cheery things away. Now all that's left is dry skin and the need to wear leggings under my jeans every single day. 

But then a happy thing happened: last week, I got red glasses. They were just what I needed to give me a little sunburst of joy during the dry, cold, gloomy, pessimistic, dark, hopeless, seemingly never-ending time of winter.

I don't even wear glasses very often because I have contacts now (they make me feel like a grownup: the cool kind), but just knowing that I am the owner of the red glasses gives me a feeling of responsibility to live up to the standards that they provide. Even when they are in my dresser in my room and not on my face, I know that they are sitting there in their case expecting me to live up to my potential as the Girl with the Red Glasses. 

I wake up every morning and my red glasses say to me, "Good morning Laura! We hope you have a happy day! You need to know this to get through your day: you have not lost your spunk. You are perfectly adequate, 100% because of Jesus. You have joy in your heart and you get to shake love sprinkles onto the great cupcake that is life. Now go make some coffee and read your Bible." 

My red glasses are nice reminders that help me see what is important (get it? Because they help me see both metaphorically and visually). 

Sometimes my red glasses give me pep talks and they say, "Hey. You can do this. We know it's (freaking super incredibly) cold outside and you're already wearing three pairs of socks and still your toes are shivering, but you're going to get through this (at least you don't live in Vermont or Siberia). Really. Go drink some coffee or tea and call your mom because she can empathize, and stay inside if at all possible. Try not to get eaten by CAT buses. It's going to be okay. Jesus loves you and He likes you, even though you're completely insufficient to breathe independently of Him. He can make your heart warm (and your fingers, if you remember to wear your gloves). It's going to be okay, and one day, it's going to be spring." 

So what I'm saying is: winter is absolutely the worst. But joy is attainable. Jesus wants you to have joy because you can't teach other people how amazing He is if you're not happy about it. And if the thing that brings you joy is red glasses, then yay! Me too! 

Love,
Lauralicious