It's past my bedtime, yet, here I am thinking and writing away! But hey, sometimes I'm a rebel, I mean I don't even have my retainer in 😝 Ok, too much, sorry, but we may need this comic relief by the end of this one...
As some of you know from an earlier post of mine "Big Eyes: Things I've Learned." I had a health scare this year... the long and short of it is that I woke up one Saturday with about 90% vision loss in my right eye... fast forward through a day in the hospital and a trip to a couple of specialists, the word was "you're the perfect candidate for MS..." let's skip over all that's wrong with that phrasing with a patient who's scared and never even been in the hospital over night before and get to a couple of months ago after an MRI and testing by a leading neurologist who specializes in MS telling me he sees nothing to support that belief and although we will continue annual MRIs to make sure there are no changes, he is confident everything was triggered by a virus gone wrong.... and to that I say "thank you Jesus!" Now let me interject here and say that I only had one horrible evening of crying and fearing over it, and then an extended period of wondering and thinking way too much, but the fear was gone. I'm blessed to have a family full of ministers and one of my uncles, Morton, called me and talked me through that first night, he talked, answered questions, prophesied, prayed and told me the sign would be that when we hung up peace would come and I wouldn't have a problem pillowing my head to sleep... all I could think was "you're right that'll be a sign, because I know me and if I sleep a wink it's got to be God!" Of course, all I said was "okay, thanks, love ya." But we hung up and within a few minutes I could barely keep my eyes opened. To all of you "give it to God and go to sleepers," yes, I agree, it's just that I normally have to remind myself of that until around 4:00am on those nights.
Since god brought me through all of that, however, I've noticed a change in my left eye.. I see flashing when I look down or too far to the left, mainly when I'm in bed or in a dimly lit place... you'd think i might learn my lesson and just approach this problem with blind faith (no pun intended.) And I will say, I was proud of myself, I did wait many weeks before thinking I do really need to get this checked... I wasn't worried about MS or Optic Neuritis this time, but my dad had a detached retina and I've had enough of the eye prodding and drops for a few decades, let's not go sticking needles in and doing surgeries now, okay? Blessed again, I know an optometrist who attends my home church, I saw him last night and asked about it. He recommended I make an appointment for testing today because it sounded like a tear which in many cases leads to retina detachment, just what I was fearing. That pride I felt for having faith dissolved into embarrassment I had let it go so long and felt more like stupidity than faith... today I went for more eye prodding and drops and pictures and lights but this time they didn't find anything, the flashing must be left over effects from my initial problem because there are no visible tears or anything abnormal looking, again, "thank you Lord for being faithful when I am of little faith."
I do want to talk about one thing tonight... many times in the Bible I read "oh ye of little faith!" Or "why do you doubt" or "fear not." One of my questions for my uncle on night one was about fear... as a Christian being raised in the church I've been taught, or at least I've interpreted that if you have fear you can't have faith... and without faith you can't see a miracle... and because of that I felt embarrassed of being scared and I was also even more afraid because I wanted a healing miracle if I could have one. And through this I learned something, Morton told me that I was getting two things confused... the emotion of fear and the spirit of fear... they are two separate things. Emotions are reactional, and everyone feels the emotion of fear at some point. But the spirit of fear is something you live under, that oppresses you, something you have to fight against. I also started noticing little things in the Word of God that had slipped by before.. It says "ye of little faith" not "ye faithless" and it's Jesus or angels talking, well of course, comparatively we are all, even uncle Mort, of "little faith" when standing in a place with the heavenlies! So maybe I want to increase my faith yes but at least I have a little, and there's also scripture about a "grain of mustard seed" sized faith being enough!! I also got thinking that people doubt things they somewhat believe, you don't "doubt" something you have no belief in in the first place, you can only doubt things you think could be true or are true... So if you doubt something there's a degree of faith in the first place. Listen, I'm not saying we should leave our faith mixed with doubt, we should not, work to increase your faith! I'm saying we can't continue to think we are faithless because we are not and we must not accept that lie. Because if we view ourselves as having no faith we lose hope, the two are intertwined and lead to actions! We need to have faith to act on, that's where all good comes from!
It's late, I hope this makes sense when I read it back in the morning... I just want you all to know that we all have fears and rough patches but we all have faith too! And if you recognize that faith then please act on it! Faith is like a muscle, if you use it, it will grow! And the last scripture I want to mention is "God has given each person THE MEASURE of FAITH" you do have faith, what God gives he doesn't take away, you just need to work it, honey!
