Eye-opener
My grandfather complained of blurry vision for years.
When he finally succumbed to my grandmother’s nagging, he went to the eye doctor and was diagnosed with cataracts. To eighteen-year-old me, my grandpa was ancient, though he was probably in his late sixties.
Now I was sitting in the exam chair, listening to my eye doctor tell me why my eyes were blurry.
“You have cataracts,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re too young to have cataracts.”
Yeah, well, I’m too young to be this old, but there it is.
“We can give you 20/20 vision now,” he exuded. “Better than Lasik. I use a laser to cut out the old lens and replace it with a new one.”
Laser? Cutting? In my eyes? What if he sneezed. Or drank too much coffee that morning and had a tremor. Or…
My mind imagined all kinds of scenarios, none of them good. I kind of like to see things, blurry as they are.
They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Physically, my eyes were blurry. Could there be a correlation to the spiritual? What happens when my spiritual eyes are blurred? Is there surgery to remove spiritual blindness?
In the Book of Acts in the Bible, there’s a story about Saul, a Pharisee who persecuted Jewish Christians. One day when he was riding on a horse to Damascus, God audibly spoke to him.
“Saul, why are you persecuting me?”
The story goes that Saul was struck blind. He regained his sight when ‘something like scales’ fell out of his eyes. Kind of like Heavenly Lasik. God will do whatever it takes to get someone’s attention.
I had a similar situation in August. No, I didn’t persecute anyone, in case you were wondering. I had this fabulous idea for a novel. At the Oregon Christian Writer’s conference the prior year, I talked to several editors about it. Everyone said they wanted to read it when I finished.
So I went a different direction. Why? Because the book was taking too long to write, and I wanted to get established as a fiction writer. I wrote a novel specifically for Harlequin’s Love Inspired Suspense line.
Had it professionally edited.
Sent it to my agent, and he submitted it to an acquisitions editor.
I saw keynote speaker Robin Jones Gunn at a conference where she told a wonderful story about how she always wanted to be a missionary. She saw herself washing clothes in a bucket on the banks of a river in Africa. God had other ideas. She became a writer. Her Christy Miller series touched more teen girls than she could have ever influenced with her hands in a wash bucket in Africa.
During her talk, I heard God speak to my spirit.
“Why do you have you hands in someone else’s wash bucket?”
“Huh?”
“I gave you that novel to write over a year ago. Why are you trying to write for Love Inspired Suspense? Finish the book!”
Wow. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard God speak to you, but it is thrilling and scary at the same time.
Since then, Harlequin rejected my manuscript (thank you) and I’m feverishly working on finishing a novel. It is called The Girl in the Cardboard Box. It’s a story of redemption and trying to placate an angry God. (He isn’t, by the way. As you’ll find out when you read it).
My physical eyes are now clear, and my spiritual eyes are too. Pray I can finish this book soon.
More next time. Thanks for hanging on to the end.
