Our family just spent two days in Memphis to "wrap up" a great summer! From trips, swimming, day adventures, to our 3 weeks at M4 Camps, a weekend in Memphis was our final destination before we started gearing up for the new school year. Melanie is teaching 3rd grade this year. She has another exciting year ahead for her. Micah is entering his junior year of high school at Grenada. What?!! How did I get old enough to have a junior in high school? Oh yeah....I did turn 40 a few weeks ago. Malaree is going to 6th grade and middle school. It's hard to believe how quickly it all goes by.
My reality for the next 6-8 weeks changed last night when I took my contacts out before bed. I'm having eye surgery done on Wednesday. I have a disease called kerataconus in both eyes. The short of it I have a thinning cornea that causes major blurriness in my vision. I can see pretty well with hard contacts. The downside is they are pretty irritable, and a constant thorn in the flesh to me. My vision has been a real struggle for the past 15 years or so.
I've been waiting years for a particular surgery to be approved to stop the progression of the disease kerataconus. That surgery is called Collagel Cross-linking. For years, I would ask my ophthalmologist if the surgery had been FDA approved yet. Every year, the answer was NO. Until last year. It was approved and I was a candidate. One problem: $4,000 per eye. Ouch! Even though I was approved, that was quite the roadblock. God is so good though. In February, I got a call about a way for the surgery to be paid for 100%. God has provided for me to have this surgery. The first one is this Wednesday. The surgery won't "correct" my vision. I'll still have to wear contacts. But it will stop the disease in its tracks, virtually preventing me from needing a cornea transplant.
When I woke up this morning, I didn't put my right contact in, so the eye would be ready for surgery. That means no contact for a minimum of 3 weeks. It'll probably be 6-8 b/c of having the other eye done in 3 weeks or so. My reality changed. Without being able to see what is "normal" for me for that long is changing my everyday routine. I can still "see", but everything is blurry without contacts. I'll be relying so much more on my family and friends to help me get where I need to go. I'll be relying heavily on volunteers at the church to do things I once easily did. My reliance on others, from yesterday to today, has increased greatly. I will HAVE to rely on others.
This reminds me our my relationship with Jesus. I need him to rescue me from my sin. He is the ONLY one that can do that. There are times that I think that I can do these things on my own. Then I realize that He is the only way and the only one that can truly help me. I'm reminded constantly by the scriptures that our God is a God that heals. I love reading the passages where Jesus heals a blind man. Although I'm not completely blind, I understand some of that struggle. There is comfort in the fact of knowing that God is in control, even in our afflictions. He is in control, even when we don't know what is next.
My reality has changed, at least for the next month and a half. My prayer is that the Dr. is successful in the surgery this Wednesday. My prayer also is that my vision will be better than ever after all of this. Though my reality has changed, the One who I serve has not. I will praise Him through all of this.
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