Glasses Off: Seeing God When Your Vision Is Gone

By Ciara Laine Myers

Glasses Off is a gentle nudge, a warm but challenging invitation to focus. With one living, breathing essay after the next, Ciara welcomes you in with her authentic voice and tender heart. These fresh words serve as a reminder that while life looks different for each of us, God’s mysterious ways don’t always need to be so shrouded in mystery. That if we face ourselves, reflect, and grow, our lives can radiate—they can be as exquisite as we’d hoped. And, when we realize that God is present, beckoning us toward something greater, toward a specific vision for this season of our lives, we can relish in the fact that it’s up to us to find Him now—that it always has been.

“What a fantastic read for the everyday person to have fresh vision for their lives! Ciara sparks the imagination with her personal and cultural stories, vulnerability, practical insights, and biblical anchoring. She writes in a way that is whimsical, lighthearted and substantive all at the same time. It is as if you were sitting at a table with her enjoying a nice cup of coffee having a conversation that leaves you both encouraged and challenged to live life to the fullest.”—Ross Sawyers, Lead Pastor of 121 Community Church

“This book—and Ciara’s writing—are both incredible and timely! Her words are life-giving and soul-restoring! I couldn’t put it down!”—Holly Christine Hayes, Founder + CEO, Sanctuary Project

“Ciara Myers’ book, Glasses Off: Seeing God When Your Vision Is Gone, is a fresh read on vision. She passionately holds on to God even when the vision He has given her gets lost in the fog. Sharing her life stories along the way, Ciara invites you to look for God amidst all of life’s highs and lows. She lays out practical steps for recognizing a vision from God and integrates valuable sections on God-goal setting and boundaries to put legs on that vision and protect it. As you seek God’s vision in your own life, let Ciara walk alongside you as a friend and coach. She will keep you centered on the heart of God and champion your pursuit of vision.”—Lisa Toney, Chaplain Women of Faith and author of The Scripture Challenge

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9798385002061

Ciara Laine Myers

Ciara Laine Myers is like you: a beautifully complicated, multi-faceted human. She loves her family and friends, and she loves to read. Like you, she’s not just one thing. She’s a mother and an award-winning business owner. She’s both shy and silly, a book and sports type of girl. Because of her layered nature and down-to-earth disposition, her textured storytelling is fresh and refreshing. You can find her in the pages of this book and in Prosper, Texas, where she lives with her husband Paul, her daughters Audri and Averi, and her dog Zoey. Connect with Ciara online at www.ciaralainemyers.com.

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Copyright © 2023 Ciara Laine Myers.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by

any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author

except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author

and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of

the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of

people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

844-714-3454

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in

this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views

expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are

models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Cover design and graphics: C.S. Fritz

Cover photo: Paul Myers

Author photo: Bryan Grayson Photography

Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International

Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used

by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

ISBN: 979-8-3850-0207-8 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-3850-0208-5 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-3850-0206-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023912341

WestBow Press rev. date: 7/26/2023

For my family—

For knowing me intimately and still

liking me enough to stay. There’s no

one I’d rather share my life with.

CONTENTS

Sacred Space

An Introduction

Chapter 1     A Vision from God That Is Specific to You

Chapter 2     Distinguishing between Purpose, Calling, and Vision

Chapter 3     Permission to Dream

Chapter 4     Stumbling Blocks along the Way

Chapter 5     Everything Begins with Vision

Chapter 6     Making History

Chapter 7     The Cost of a Lost Vision

Chapter 8     Practical Steps for Fulfilling a Vision from God

Chapter 9     Building Momentum

Chapter 10   Goal-Setting God’s Way

Chapter 11   Setting Boundaries to Protect Your Vision

Chapter 12   It’s about Them

1

SACRED SPACE

AN INTRODUCTION

I’m a stories person, the wider the arc the better; an autobiographical and biographical, fictional and nonfictional girl; a we-just-met-in-the-lobby but I’d-like-to-know-what-happened-when-you-were-thirteen-and-how-that-impacts-you-at-forty-three kind of person.

Once, I left for summer camp with the sound of my mom’s voice ringing in my ear, Take pictures, sweetie! Have a good time! When I arrived home, one week later, I couldn’t wait to show her the pictures I’d taken. I just knew she’d love them! She did not. Well, she’d at least appreciate the artistry, right? Wrong. Instead, the look on her face could only be described with this word: bewildered.

Who are all these people? Why did you take pictures of them? she asked.

Because you told me to take pictures while I was at summer camp.

"Yes, but I meant of you, honey. I don’t want these pictures of strangers."

Oh! I responded, startled and slightly embarrassed. Why would you want pictures of me though? You already know what I look like. You already know my story. Don’t worry, Mom, I asked for their consent and even interviewed them a little!

Filling in the now awkward silence, I continued, So Mom, look at this one. This couple has been together since they were five! How cute are their matching outfits? I pointed to the next image, And this girl will be the first in her family to graduate college, and she even hopes to get into medical school someday! Oh, and this sweet couple isn’t actually a couple at all. They’re best friends. But anyone with eyes can see that something else is starting to form! Mom, look at all these stories. Aren’t these pictures worth a thousand words?

She smiled and shook her head lovingly and laughed, and I smiled too.

So that’s what this book is—a collection of stories about life as I see it. Only now, I’m not a bold fourteen-year-old with a disposable camera and strange journalistic tendencies. I’m grown and growing, and the stories are what I’m learning about myself because that’s the only vantage point I can pull from.

Art is full of classic tales about love and war, ones I could never have written. Although they are some of my favorite kinds of stories, this story is not one of them. This is an underdog story. It’s for the improbable contender, the unrevealed visionary, the dark horse, the unlikely victor. It’s a story about stepping inside a God-given assignment with a noble aim and strong intention.

I hope that you’ll savor it. That something sticks with you as it stuck with me while writing it. That the experience of reading this book will be a little like fine dining. It represents hours of my labor, creativity, and false starts. Years of experimentation and funding and trial and error. Market research and my name on the front door, for better or for worse. A decade of work delivered to the table. You’ll devour it with a glass of water—or a glass of red if that’s your thing. And if you enjoy the experience enough, you’ll share it with a loved one or leave a good review, recommend it to a friend, and sometimes sneak back for seconds. I hope the tastes of my words linger.

There are some people this book is not for. It is not for the perfectly decisive person, who has everything figured out. It’s for the person who sometimes feels puzzled but remains hopeful, hungry for answers. I hope if I share some of my scribbles with you, you’ll feel them intensely in your gut, and you’ll have the permission, then, to rewrite your stories with God in the center, stabilizing your weaving and reweaving going forward. I wrote this book not to give you those answers but to figure them out for myself. It proved itself to me as a worthy endeavor because I grew as my love for God grew.

My future is no longer hinged on life’s frailties. And through it all, I found her, the one I’d lost a long time ago. And I challenged her to stretch past herself into the person who was no longer waiting to become someone else. I found my purpose, and it’s brought me here, arrestingly large on the cover because I’m hoping to interrupt your inner monologue too. To share a story, to create a sacred space in which you find your calling, and to help you see a little more clearly.

CHAPTER 1

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A VISION FROM GOD THAT

IS SPECIFIC TO YOU

S KIMMING THROUGH SHINY BOOKS IN the library used to be a familiar pastime of mine. I’d glide my fingers along their polished spines, excitedly choosing one to hold, thinking, Today, this one’s for me. I’d admire the rows and rows of offerings there: The tremendous insight, years of enlightenment, and stories of heartache, possibility, and people from all walks of life. Every tongue and tribe and nation, there they were. All of the reasons I loved to read. If you ever noticed me in a bookstore, I was the one in the far corner, most likely on the floor (admittedly barefoot and laughing loudly), getting completely lost in the text.

This season, though, if I’m honest, I dread the bookstores that I once loved, feeling numb but still somehow cynical. Rather than viewing them as sanctuaries full of quiet wonderment, I feel their coldness—like they’re looking down on me with their self-help jargon, intimidating me, daring me to try and fail. Sadly, I’ve grown a little resentful of those books, resentful of myself, really. I could never put what I learned into practice, to live up to the text in its fullness, to become that future version of me I thought I’d be by now. Maybe my self-expectation was too high. Or maybe I wasn’t ready to hear what the authors were trying to tell me yet. Their professional advice, it seemed, could almost always be found on opposite ends of the same spectrum. Half the writers’ words erred on the side of wonder and promise, requesting from me only what I was longing to get—hope, clarity, confirmation, direction. These books essentially told me a similar story. Over and over again they’d say, If you could do what your kindergarten self would want you to, what would it look like? My whimsical heart loved this notion, of course, but that advice didn’t prove to be all that helpful. I’m a vastly different person today than who I was at five years old.

So I continued my exploration for something profound, something relatable. I desperately needed to know how I fit into the world and, more specifically, within the context of God’s will. I spent countless hours grasping and squandering, curious to find something specific to me. I longed for a calling. I wanted to know how to do it all and how to do it all perfectly in the middle of my dog-walking, laundry-folding, email-responding life. I yearned for validation that what I was doing was right. Because living with indecisiveness and a total lack of clarity from God felt exhausting, impossibly draining, and downright anxiety producing.

The other self-help books sounded like this: Try not to overthink your life’s purpose. There’s no such thing as a calling. Work is a means to an end. And while I appreciate both sides of this spectrum—from, follow your childhood dreams, to, a calling is overrated—I fall somewhere between the two extremes.

So I decided to work through my newfound skepticism and confusion by writing a book of my own, a comprehensive overview of my adventure with calling, purpose, and vision as it’s been formed in my world over the years. Everything God revealed to me, I wrote down.

You can borrow the words anytime. In fact, I hope you gobble them up like a delicious cherry on top of your already existing spiritual blueprint. That’s the beauty of a story, isn’t it? It’s passed along from the writer to the reader in hopes that they will take it on as their own, wear it like a favorite jacket, and feel the same feelings the writer did. Eventually, you put your memories into the narrative and expand it, adding characters and blurring the lines between what you’ve read and what you’ve now applied to your life.

Once this little diary of mine becomes yours for the taking, it’s only fair that you start with the deeply vulnerable and insecure parts of me, as all the juiciest diary entries begin. I’m sorry if you can relate to these four pain points that keep me from pursuing a God-given vision:

1. I pray less than I should and worry more than I ought to.

2. I expect others to feel the same convictions I do.

3. I lack discernment.

4. I let criticism, rejection, and fear cripple me.

I’ve spent plenty of time trapped inside these pain points, like a car lodged in the mud with an inexperienced driver behind the wheel hoping to get herself free, only to find that her wheels are spinning, that she’s sinking deeper in the mud now, that she’s exhausted every last ounce of her energy. I’ve overanalyzed and critiqued most things about myself: my personality, my caffeine intake, and my past decisions. And after two family fish passed away in just two years, I’m even reconsidering my pet-parenting abilities.

I’ve felt like an imposter in my own home, undeserving of the little hands that cup my face with innocence and tug on my dress with a tenderness so sweet it makes me tear up just thinking about it. I’ve spent more time dreaming about being used by God someday than I have putting in the work with quiet confidence that He would follow through. I’ve hidden behind the alluring pull of perfectionism, allowing myself more time to procrastinate. I’ve avoided prolonged seasons of vulnerable prayer, rationalizing that it was a waste of time when I could be pursuing something more concrete. I’ve let criticism from others crush the ambitious nature out of me. I’ve felt sorrowful amid milestones, reminders that I wasn’t living up to my potential. I mastered the art of self-loathing because it seemed, to me at least, that everyone else understood God’s plan for their lives, but I had somehow missed the memo. Needless to say, I was stuffed to the brim with insecurities, self-inflicted insults flying out like a magician’s collection of never-ending handkerchiefs, consistently tempted to throw up my hands and admit, It’s official. I do not have a specific vision for my life. Something needs to change. Without a clear vision, I knew I would spend my time on earth productively but not precisely. I would be busy, not intentional. I would bend over backward for everyone else but ignore God’s whispering request to step into partnership with Him.

If you’re anything like me, you crave God’s confirmation, but He seems aloof right now, distant, apathetic at best. Maybe your God-given dream remains unfinished. Or maybe you’re thinking, I’m just trying to get by, hoping to discern what this season of your life should look like. Either way, I promise to share everything I’ve learned the hard way: biblical, practical, and psychological truths for developing discernment inside a vision from God. I can’t promise to give you a cheat sheet or clear answers that only He can give you. And I can’t promise that this process will be an easy