What color is that anyway?

One day Mark and I were out for a walk. I couldn’t get past the royal blue polyester shorts with the white socks and “tennis shoes” as he called them. He was wearing some crazy color shirt with reds and greens in it. I mentioned something like “wow, you sure do have a variety of colors going on today.” And he looked at me with a look that told me I crushed his very soul. I said “what’s the matter?” Deliberately and slowly he explained to me that he was color-blind. He proceeded to tell me that colors were dull and everything looked almost gray. Reds and purples were especially hard to distinguish. I was so sorry that I said something to hurt his feelings, and apologized profusely. But secretly, I was jumping for joy and relieved that his styling issues had a medical excuse! Whew!! I could now explain to people why he dressed that way and of course they would understand and have sympathy. Maybe, I thought, I could come up with some sort of “garanimals” matching system for adults and help him match clothes appropriately. I was sure we could fix this. I went home and promptly, just like every other time I heard something fascinating, told my mom and my dad and my siblings about it. I asked them to stop picking on my boyfriend because he dressed differently and explained the tragedy of him being color-blind. They were ashamed, as well they should be! About a week later, Mark was in the living room at my parents house and my mom asked him a question about being color-blind and wondered if Mark could see the colors on the trees in fall. Mark started to open his mouth to speak and then stopped. He started again and then stopped. He looked over at me and just burst out laughing. He said “how many people did you tell that to?” And I said “a lot, why?” And he said “because I’m not color-blind. I just wanted to come up with a quick excuse for my style.” I couldn’t believe it. I was completely shocked. My first thought was “so you mean to tell me you purposely dress like that and can actually tell what color you are wearing?” But I decided against saying that out loud. Instead, I said “well, I’m glad you aren’t color blind, but I sure do wonder why not.” He thought that was pretty funny. I wonder how many times we look at the colors that God gives us in the miracles of creation around us and become color-blind ourselves. How many times do we miss a color because we are preoccupied?