I would have been blind, instead I see

 

              At my last annual eye exam, my optometrist suggested that I see a specialist; she thought something looked a little off, but 90% of the time what she saw wasn’t a problem. So, I went to an ophthalmologist, completely chill—there is a 90% chance it is nothing. I ran through the eye chart, got a puff test, all the semi-regular stuff that gets done to one’s eye. Then they brought me to a back room and started manipulating my eye with what looked and felt like a spoon and a dental tool.

              Next thing I knew there were needles in my eye injecting numbing solution and a big old laser burning the back of my eyes. By the time I went back to the waiting room, I felt like a throw away towel someone used to clean up a flooded muddy basement. 1 in 10. How lucky, I thought.

              After three more sessions spaced out over 8 weeks, they’d stabilized my eyes with those lasers, and in so doing they’d saved my eyesight! In fact, if I’d gone to the Ophthalmologist 3 weeks later than I did, I would have likely been too late for my right eye. How lucky! I thought.

The more that reality dawned on me—that I can still see, I can still read, still see my beautiful wife, still read my sermons—the more my downcast, downright sarcastic, “lucky me” was transformed into a “Thank God!” I became grateful for the goodness of sight, thankful for something I took for granted before.

              It took time, a little reflection and describing what happened to me to other people, to grasp the enormity of the good I had received. There are many times where that happens, receiving a good allows for thanksgiving, but only with hindsight and reflection, only with description of the good.