Photography

Focus can drastically change a picture.

The power a photographer has to place one part of a photograph in focus and leave another part dramatically blurred is impressive. The entire look of an image, and the accompanying emotion that is therefore aroused, can shift simply based on what the photographer chooses to focus on when looking through the viewfinder of the camera.

There are almost endless ways a photographer could choose to capture a scene, with the one main limitation being that the real-life scene does not change. Having a background (or foreground) fade into a blur is a deliberate choice by the photographer, depending on the look they are going for.

You may have guessed by now that this post is not actually about photography. I don’t pretend to be an expert on photography, although I do know some basics, such as the ‘rule of thirds’, setting your aperture and utilizing natural lighting. But, that’s aside the point. One thing I do have a fair amount of experience in is Life, and Life as a walk of faith.

Just like how choosing the focus point for a picture sets the mood for a photograph, what and who I choose to focus on in my life will always affect the mood for my emotional well being.

Imagine that. The Word of God seems to be true once again. "Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe." Proverbs 29:25

As an example, the past year has been a time of great struggle as well as vast amounts of healing. However, in the few months or so, things seemed to go downhill for me, and I found myself at the bottom of a dark pit...

My focus was off.

It started with a simple mistake that all of us make now and then. I, unfortunately, tend to do it a lot, but thankfully, God has placed people in my life to hold me accountable... Instead of focusing on what was going well, and how blessed my life is, I did the opposite. I started to really highlight all the bad in my life, and those bad sports became the focus of my attention. Sadly, by choosing to see in crystal clear the things that got me down, I only made matters worse.

In essence, it was a real life example the Pygmalion effect (which I learned about when reading a book a few years back). A self-fulfilling prophesy, in other words. The more I chose to focus on my life struggles, the more struggles were all I could see. The fact that I was obsessing about these struggles made me feel like I was in a hopeless situation, where bad would just follow bad. The thoughts tainted my mind, and it started to change the way I thought about myself.

What a sad, miserable way to life.

And, while I have by no means arrived, my growth curve during the few weeks has been steep. I can look back with a tiny bit of hindsight and see that choosing to focus on only what was going badly in my life actually made the experience drastically less happy, and a lot harder.

How ironic. How misguided. How backwards.

A ginormous lesson that God has been trying to teach me over the course of the past year (and past week) relates to my focus. What an amazing difference it has made already in my life to choose to set my sights only on what is going to uplift me as I navigate through life.

Indeed, it "is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man." Psalm 118:8
How much more amazing in my life, simply when I choose to see those amazing things clearly, not allowing them to be muddled by me focusing on what areas of that are still a bit off. I think of my loved ones, and generally try to think of the for their best intentions and not remembered for their worst moments. Why wouldn't I do the same for my life?

But don't take my word for it. In the Bible, Paul exhorts the believers in Philippi by saying, "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things." Philippians 4:8

What a wonderful mantra I would do well to continue to remember. Taking the high road will not always be easy for me. I fail to keep my focus where it should be more times than I'd like to recount here.

But, even in just a few days of really trying to stay positive, between what I have experienced and what others have told me, I can attest to the fact that striving to have our focus in the right place is most certainly worth it.