God and Eyeliner

I have Essential Tremor, which makes my hands shake, which has made it challenging as a female who wears make-up. I've learned a technique for applying mascara - I hold my right wrist with my left hand, which gives me a little more control with a shaky wand. Eyeliner had become a bit more problematic for me, even with the wrist-hand technique, and there were skips and jumps as I struggled to draw a line with my eyeliner pencil.

But then for some reason one day I closed my eyes, positioned the pencil on the outside of my right-eye and started pulling the stroke inward, feeling where my hand was on the lash line of my eyelid instead of using my sight. Maybe it quieted my mind, maybe it tricked my hand into doing some it'd done for years - however it worked, when I opened my eyes I had drawn a thin, perfect line right above my lashes.

I think I'm starting to experience God in a closed-eyes way too. The more time I spend reading about him, focusing my mind on him, trying to still my spirit and listen, the more often I wake up with an awareness and gratitude for the creator of it all. Things look different. The dark silhouette of a tree against an early morning sky is so beautiful it makes me ache and brings tears to my eyes. I wait patiently behind a cyclist in my car on a back road and then give him wide berth as I circle around him. He raises a hand in thanks and his gesture fills me with love. I extend a small kindness which is responded to with acknowledgement - we are two human beings connected by a thread of God's grace.

Just as I am using the sense of touch instead of sight to put on eyeliner in the morning, perhaps I am starting to live my days with a God sense intermingled with my human sense.

"...the person who takes shape within is formed by something you can't see and touch - the Spirit - and becomes a living spirit." ~ john 3:5, the message