The View

The View

By Elisa Morgan

I floated on my back atop the azure water of the pool. My outstretched arms positioned my torso in place while my feet dangled down. Slowly, I breathed in and out, noticing my lungs rising above the surface with the intake and then dipping below on the outtake.

Floating is one my favorite pastimes – ever. There’s something so very freeing about being suspended in water. So little effort creates such an all-encompassing experience.

It’s like being held by invisible arms, nestled against a transparent heart.

I opened my eyes to discover the blue that I knew to be beneath me also arched above me. A cloudless sky dotted by the tops of six palm trees extended strangely horizontal from my own prone view. Their dark, prickly trunks silhouetted. Their shiny pom-pom heads staring down at me with winky eyes slitted by the sun, reminding me that I was not alone.

Whirling my hands through the water, I slowly spun in another direction. Snowy birds sped in an arrow-like formation above me. I watched as their formation broke into two parts, a sudden space appearing between the groups. An odd anxiety fluttered in my chest. Then one part winged toward the other and reconnect in three lines, forming what looked to be an “E”.

I giggled. Was this a message direct from God to me: Elisa?

A few seconds later, the “E” morphed into a new arrow-shape, heading off on a slightly shifted route. I stared until the sight vanished in the atmosphere and then refocused my sight on the bluer than blue space left behind.

I dropped my legs to the pool bottom, righting myself and reoriented myself to my normal vertical position in my world. Two chairs held my striped towel and book. Cacti pierced the gravel and raised their pokey arms towards the sun. The palms stood erect now, like watchful soldiers keeping guard.

What had it been - ten minutes? Fifteen? No more for certain. But in shifting my body from vertical to horizontal, from standing on my firm feet to suspending myself in a watery abyss, I’d been rejuvenated. Reoriented. Refreshed.

I remember a similar shift-of-view-experience as a mother of a baby. Lying next to my daughter on the carpet while she flailed her arms in the air, discovering limbs and toes, I looked around at the world from her perspective. Dust mites puffed about under the couch. A dog’s chew toy under the TV. Variegated hues in the strands of the carpet. A dead fly on the floor in the corner below the window. I turned over and some ten feet above me, the popcorn ceiling held a ceiling light holding more bugs. The light fell in shafts from the window onto the opposing wall forming a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors.

My baby girl stirred and gurgled, asking without words to be turned to her tummy. I rose to my knees with fresh energy.

Or what about times when I’ve lain in bed sick over the years? With little energy to read or even watch a show, I’ve stared from my curled side out the upstairs window at the sky with its puffy clouds, black birds polka-dotting to the west and trunkless tree branches stretching their arms up and out.

Try it? Wherever you are, stop and drop to the ground and look. Notice. See.

There is something so “other” about the practice of noticing. Embracing a posture out of our norm. Opening our eyes to what is right before us. Slowing our souls to see…

…the view before us.

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.  (Ephesians 1:18)

Elisa Morgan's latest book is Fruitful Living. She is the cohost of the podcast, God Hears Her. She is also the cohost of Discover the Word and contributor to Our Daily Bread. Her other books include Christmas Changes Everything, You are Not Alone, When We Pray Like Jesus, Hello, Beauty Full, and The Beauty of Broken. Connect with Elisa @elisamorganauthor on Facebook and Instagram.