#016 doubled and blurred

When I close my eyes, I can see perfectly.  Sometimes, I just want to shut my eyes and never have to open them to the blurred world that presents itself to me every morning.  In my mind’s eyes, colors are crisp, distant things are considered a view not a blur, and I can recognize a friendly face from more than two feet away.  But when I wake up, I see the real hazy, dimmed version of the world around me.  Objects are doubled in one eye, and faded in the other.  I have a very rare disease in my left eye, that threatens the remaining vision.

It’s so weird that the most microscopic bit of scar tissue and blood vessels threatens to change the way I see my life going.

To be fair, I demand one thing.  I don’t want sympathy.  I don’t like it when people grimace and tell me how sorry they are for me.  It’s not that I don’t have my frustrations or down moments, because, hey,  I do.  I’m human.

But, honestly, I’m not sorry.  It’s just another lesson, another life adventure.  I’m not noble to think that, or brave, or extraordinary, or special.  I’m just Emily who happens to have poor vision and random eye diseases.

I quit the best job I ever had (at least in my short work life that is) in order to take care of my eyes for a bit.  In 2012, I will be having multiple eye surgeries and procedures done.  The worst part isn’t the actual surgeries (I don’t have to do any of the work hahaha); it’s actually the waiting.  I hate waiting.

Waiting.  It’s like pacing in a room for six months to find out whether my life will be one that will include driving, getting my Master’s degree, becoming a CPA, and getting to do “my list” or finding out that my life will be one of fading colors and blurred shapes that has all sorts of restrictions .  I can accept either side, but the waiting….is torture.  I can find hope in either of those situations, but I want to know which one I will be living.

The plan.  I will be flying out to OH to visit a specialist who is the only doctor in the US who is published on my condition and try to get some more answers.  After that, my wonderful doctors here in LA will try to salvage my damaged cornea.  A couple surgeries, a few laser procedures, a couple month’s healing in between will all decide my future.  Well, sort of.

I know God has a plan for me, and it’s my job to bring Him glory regardless of which of the above situations happen.  And I will.  I know I will.  Even as a kid, I knew something drastic would happen in my life where I would always point back and say, ‘that’s the moment.”  What I mean is I knew I am meant to make a difference, as a lot of people are.  Some people are given more opportunities to make differences than others, with all sorts of circumstances and game changers.  Some people can sing their hearts out, go on American Idol and wow a nation.  Others are given lots of money to buy wings of hospitals and libraries for low income school districts.

I was given an eye disease.  But I was always given a God whose grace continues to surround me, friends who support me, a family who will never leave me.

Regardless of what happens six months from now, when my wait in the waiting room ends and I find out the ending of this chapter, I know I have hope.  My hope is that no matter how well my vision is for the rest of my life, I will have a sort of eyesight.  Because of what God is teaching me, I can see how to help people, I can see how to minister to someone who has it much worst than I, and I can see how I can show that in my weakness, God is strong.

There are no clichés or poems to make blurred vision sound good, but when you can’t see very well, sometimes it helps bring other things into focus better.

For now I see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.  Don’t let your good vision blur what you should really be seeing this coming year.