It means I am in the regular habit of looking at beads and seeing necklaces. I stare at a blank computer screen and envision a 250-page novel. I see a white flower and dream up ways to make it blue. I look at an outline or a budget sheet, and I see bonfire kindling.
Apparently, being a visionary is basically another word for being impractical.
I’ve been a visionary for the past 29 years, and I’ve just discovered this downside. Twenty-nine years. That’s a long time to go without knowing you’re idealistic.
The good news is I’ve finally figured it out. The bad news is . . . it’s still true.
Which is rather an awkward thing when you’re trying to get to Haiti. And the church asks for an outline. And your supervisor is waiting for a budget. And management wants a team job description. And your mother is wondering where you’re going to live.
And I, in all my visionary, impractical impulsiveness manage a very blithe, uncaring, “I don’t know.”
Which, I have discovered, is very grating on the ears of those people who are not like me. The other half of this world that lives in the logical, practical, realistic, un-cloudy side. (I.e: No flying purple cats.) The people I like to call “administrators.” I’m sure they have a real name for their personality type, and I’m sure they know what they’re called. But I am a visionary, and that’s not one of the things people like me remember very well. We make up our own names instead.
I was talking to someone recently about this, and he said he knows just what I mean. He has an administrator in his life whom he doesn’t understand at all. They don’t get each other. A.k.a. they annoy each others’ socks off.
What did they do? They found an intermediary. A go-between to translate all communications so no one dies, and everyone gets to keep their socks. A link to connect the visionary’s creativity with the administrator’s logic.
So, what am I doing about my problem?
I’m praying. I’m praying for God to send someone who annoys my socks off. Someone who has the logic I lack. Someone who actually enjoys creating outlines. Someone who knows what a budget is. Someone who likes to administrate. Several someone’s who are ready to jump on a plane and move to Haiti for two years and learn Creole and put up with me saying, “I don’t know,” a lot.
I am praying for a team. A body. A family.
Cause that’s the Church of Christ. This is who we are. This is what we do.
We annoy each other. We pick out each others’ faults. We think we’re weird, but the other one’s weirder. We read each others’ thoughts and know how to make each other laugh. We are stronger when we work together. We complete each other.
I like the way my mom said it in a little song she wrote for us to sing when we were kids. Verse three goes like this:
I’m not like you, you’re not like me.
We’re very different, you see.
But God made you, and God made me,
And we are a family.
