Looking Through Colored Glasses

“That’s a pretty color combination on that house,” I told my husband Larry, as we walked around town on a sunny afternoon.

          “The yellow and brown one?” he asked.

          “No, that peach colored one.”

          “What peach one?” he said, “It’s yellow.”

          “That’s not yellow, it’s peach,” I emphasized as I pointed toward the house.

          “Take off your glasses, it’s yellow.”

Sure enough, when I removed my glasses, the house was yellow with brown trim. Not at all, the pretty peach with wine trim that I saw through my glasses. My glasses had turned dark in the bright sunlight and distorted my color perception.

Even though Larry and I were looking at the same house, because I was looking through tinted glasses, the color of the house looked different than it really was.

How many times in our relationships do we have a disagreement only because we are looking at the circumstance from a different perspective?

We don’t always have colored glasses to remove to see another person’s view. Sometimes understanding their view comes from listening.

“But avoid foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and useless.” Titus 3:9 (NKJV)

Helen L. Hoover