Blurred vision…

It’s been almost six weeks. SIX weeks since I had cataract surgery. My vision is still not clear. Every day when I wake up I wonder if this will be the day when voila! Everything is clear! Last week’s follow-up appointment showed that my eyes are healing well, that everything is ok… but still… my vision is out of focus.

It’s been frustrating. Disorienting. It’s even affected my balance, throwing it off a bit — as experienced when I fell a couple of weeks ago. The fall was a bit comical in retrospect… one foot caught on an uneven pavement and then, as if in slow motion, I was unable to regain my balance and went down on the opposite hip, scraping my arm as it tried to protect the fall. Thankfully, nothing was broken… but I did hobble around for a few weeks until my wrenched knee no longer was bothersome.

The fall accentuated the problem of having distorted vision. But it also surfaced a distorted view of life. I started wondering if my eyes will EVER get better? Was the surgery a mistake? What if….?

My focus — my vision, even my view of myself and life — was clouded, confused. Not being sure-footed or stable surfaced fear and robbed me of peace and confidence.

Sometimes this happens in our relationship with God as well. Our focus on who we are in Christ, on who HE is becomes unclear. We forget what GOD says about us… and we become fearful, defeated. Peace and confidence elude us. We get tripped up over things that ususally wouldn’t be a problem.

So… what DOES God say about us? about who we are? For those who have placed their faith and trust in God, He says…

• We are His child, adopted into His family.
• We are complete in Him and have everything that we need to live life abundantly.
• We are a “new creature” because of being born into His family.
• We are a unique, one-of-a-kind individual.
• We are His ambassadors here on planet Earth, representing Him to the world around us.
• We are His light in a world of darkness.
• We have been given specific gifts/abilities that enable us to function/serve others.
• We are a member of His body — a worldwide community of Christ followers.

I was sharing this list with a group recently and asked them to consider…

• If I’m _______ (fill in the blank with one of the above), how does that affect what I do? what I say? how I think?
• In other words, how does ______ affect my character? my thoughts? my actions?
• Which of these is hardest for me to believe is true about myself? Why???

Sometimes I struggle with recognizing and accepting my capabilities and limitations. For example, it’s easy for me to see my inadequacies, my insecurities, all the “but’s…” in my life. I fall into a trap of comparing myself to others… and as a result, always fall short.

Going back to blurry vision and how it distorts our view… when my focus gets out-of-whack regarding how God sees me, I’m much more susceptible to listening to things that are untrue… like playing a tape (think of the old cassette tapes) that rehearses all the things that are UNtrue about me instead of listening to the new tape that counters those false claims with what God says.

What we spend our time thinking about has the power to affect our emotions, our actions, our character.

One thing this latest life experience has surfaced is how crucial it is for me to make sure I’m listening to the right things. There are no easy fixes for this, but a good place to start is what the Bible calls “being renewed in our minds.” (see Romans 12: 2) Renewing is like rebooting a computer — stopping what we’re thinking, restarting by installing a new “tape”, and then moving forward “refreshed,” so to speak. This isn’t a one-time thing, but something that needs to be repeated as often as necessary.

Another helpful action is to take our thoughts “captive.” (see 2 Corinthians 10:5) I’m a visual person, and so I picture a wrong thought as something I need to lasso and throw in jail (!) where it can’t have any more influence on me. Easier said than done, but the idea is that we need to be pro-active about what thoughts we allow our minds to dwell on.

There are a lot of voices trying to get our attention, trying to capture our minds and our thoughts. Social media, advertisements, others’ opinions to name a few. Who are going to listen to?? May we encourage one another to daily be in God’s Word so that we’re hearing what HE says is true.

I’m not sure when — or even if — my vision will be restored, but in the meantime, I’m grateful for some of the lessons that have surfaced because of this experience. I’m also grateful for how God often uses others — like when I needed to hang onto my husband’s arm when my walking was unsteady — to enable me, to enable all of us to have joy in the journey of this thing we call “Life!”