I've been undergoing an unusual cross of late. My eyes started giving me trouble a few months ago. Looking back, I see that its been longer still that the symptoms started to first appear. First there was an itchiness, then redness and burning, which eventually gave way to soreness, strain, blurriness, spots and floaters. About 3 weeks ago I finally made my way to an opthomalogist friend who diagnosed me with a few small problems creating a medium size problem for me.
The medium sized problem was actually a large problem for my soul. It made my anxiety, which up until now has been well managed, really spiral out of control. So I have found myself climbing out of bed each morning and clawing my way forward through the day- a sensation I felt certain I had conquered long ago, I am now revisiting. With my usual gusto I decided I would meet the challenge and tackle both my eye issues and anxiety issue simultaneously and get back "in control" of them.
It turns out that God has other lessons he desires I learn.
Yesterday, the dam broke when I realized that the anxiety medication I had wanted to try would exaccerbate my eye trouble ( by drying them out further) and that my eye trouble would then exaccerbate my anxiety ( by making me fear a blind future). When I threw everything I had at my problems full force, I saw I had created a great big loop of troubles and nothing more. I had been absolutely useless.
Almost imediately inside I felt like something in me broke.
And in that brokenness, I felt myself surrender.
I surrendered to God. I took my whole problem and stopped trying to fix it and instead just sat with it and accepted it for what it was. You'd think I would've wept or despaired, but no. I did plenty of that in the weeks and months leading up to it. Instead I found the very strangest of things inside of me- hope.
This morning, I woke up hopeful. I have no answers, no new solutions, but a brand new self knowledge to guide me forward. I can see that God has lovingly given me this cross because he trusts me with it. He knows I will bring good out of my cross as he has out of his. That good is meant for my salvation and it hurts, at times terribly, but is necessary. This cross is largely invisible to the world. My eyes look fine so no one, even if I tell them, can really understand how my world has changed. Picking up a book or my phone to read has been an agony some days. it feels so perfectly designed to be my cross that I know it is by intention. I suppose there is a strange comfort in that. God knows me so well that he knows exactly what a cross for me looks and feels like in order to be meritorious.
I also know that talk is cheap. For a long time I thought I knew what "we walk by faith, not by sight" meant. Now, I know I actually walk by sight and that my faith is weak indeed. Only when my physical eyes offered me spots and distortions, pain and worry, could I connect to how spiritually blind I am too. How often have I stumbled spiritually because I live too much attached to the world and what happens tomorrow or next week or next year, when spiritually I have neglected my eternity. If I worried half as much over my spiritual vision, as I have over my physical vision I'd be a saint by now.
Naturally, I begin to see the meaning in the myriad passages of the gospel that speak on vision now- almost daily the words vision and sight comes up in the readings. How have I missed it all this time? I took it for granted, is how. The richness of the stories is becoming a new found treasure.
In my recollection I take the position of blind Bartimaeus. Sitting by the roadside begging "Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me". I thought what needed healing was my eyes, but God saw further. "What wilt that have me do unto thee?" is the question he poses to Bartimaeus and to me, so I ask along with him "Lord, that I might see". And because he is faithful, he has allowed me to see that my spiritual blindness is far greater than my troubled eyes.
Immediately after recieveing his sight, we are told that Bartimaeus, followed Jesus, in the way.
And so must I begin, in faith.
Again.
