When I was 12 years old, my mom took me to get my eyes checked because I couldn’t read the chalkboard well in class from my seat. I already had to forfeit my vanity and self-esteem to the evil modifications of braces and frizzed-out hair, and this change was something that I unabashedly refused. I remember sitting in the office after my evaluation while my mom talked to the doctor. I heard the words “prescription” and “select some frames,” and I knew my fight was over. I thought it was the end of the world. The receptionist, watching my sadness pile on in melodramatic fashion (as it typically did at that age), said to me, “You know, having vision that is not so perfect may not be a bad thing.”
I looked at her, stunned at her audacity to try to make this better when I knew my social life was about to take on a slow-burning death, and I gave her a half smile. “What does that even mean?” I asked.
She continued, “People who see everything a little blurry can have an advantage when Christmas rolls around. Every single light on your Christmas tree or around your town or over water will have a magical glow and reflection to it while the rest of us just see light bulbs. You will see it more beautifully.”
That statement meant nothing to me that day, and in fact, I think I forgot about it for a few months until Christmas came around. I realized that she was right. It was a problem with my vision that turned out to allow me to see things in a way that I never could have imagined. I still think about it at Christmas, and not that it significantly changed my circumstances of having ridiculous eyesight, but that she took my perspective and what seemed like a nightmare to a 12-year-old and made it magical.
In college, and as an adult, I have encountered circumstances that made that “problem” almost laughable. I’ve been in situations and relationships, and I’ve made choices that looking back, I can’t imagine what I was thinking. I had faith in the wrong people, I let other people down, I was selfish, and I tried to control everything instead of giving God the chance. I’ve had fear and felt numb and afraid of things like consequences, reaching out, prayer, or intimacy.
Dying to yourself, in some ways and while it seems like the end of the world, changes you. Those parts of you that are weak or vulnerable, the places that you hide inside of, the questions that you run from, they show you exactly what you need to know. They show you what your capacity looks like. They show you how your vision and perception can be skewed. They show you that value is not something we create, it is predetermined by God when He made us. He knows it, we just have to see ourselves the way God sees us.
And while you ask God, “Why? Why do I have to endure this? I don’t even know what to do or feel, I can’t find what to take away from it that could be for good. I don’t even know how to pray to You right now,” it’s important to remember that, sometimes, our vision can blur. Sometimes, it can happen by someone else’s hand, the hand of God, or it can be by our own hand, and the results are the same. You find yourself confused, hurt, numb, angry, or unrecognizable to yourself.
It does not matter what you do, or who you have been, or what mistakes you have made. It doesn’t matter how afraid you feel, or confused, or how lost hope really seems. Loneliness and isolation in this state are not the only options because God promises to never leave us.
“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
And through the rivers, they will not overflow you.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched,
Nor will the flame burn you.”
Isaiah 43:2
When you face a situation where you are unjustly taken down, God will take you into His hands and justify it according to His plan when human nature and justice have let you down.
He can take your blurred vision and make something beautiful out of it.
It can take time, but no moment in time ever lasts forever. Change always takes place. He can grow your capacity in ways that you never imagined about yourself, and He created us in love and for love, with value, and if we crash into Him in those lost spaces, He will pull you through no matter how strong the current.
“No evil will befall you,
Nor will any plague come near your tent.
For He will give His angels charge concerning you,
To guard you in all your ways.”
Psalm 91:10-11
God bless,
M
Blue Withens 