I’ve been absent from this blog again, which seems to happen far too frequently. But I’m back, and with immense thankfulness for all the Lord’s goodness and faithfulness. I was hospitalized for another surgery on October 23. (I had barely recovered from my prolapse surgery done on July 22.) This time, it was an emergency surgery to repair a detached retina.
It happened suddenly while I was working on my computer. Everything in my right eye suddenly started to go completely black. It was like a camera aperture closing, leaving only a narrow window of vision in the eye. Looking up or down, I saw only total darkness. It was scary and disconcerting, so I went straight to the eye doctor.
I am grateful for so many things…
- I’m grateful that the Lord helped me realize that something was seriously wrong, which prompted me to rush to the eye doctor.
- That the doctor acted quickly and sent me to the emergency room at the best eye clinic in our area, where I underwent emergency surgery that day.
- That we caught it in time for the doctors to attempt to repair it, though they made no guarantees of success.
- And that the surgery went well; the surgeons are pleased with my progress.
I won’t deny that learning how serious a detached retina can be shook me up quite a bit. If not caught in time, it can result in permanent and total blindness,
Healing is very slow because the eye must absorb the gas that is inserted during surgery. The gas holds the retina in place while it heals, and absorption can take months. It was like looking through a thick fog. However, as the gas disappeared, my vision returned. It seems to be back to normal, and I don’t think I’ll need new glasses. We’ll see what the doctors say at my next checkup on January 13.
My eye is still sore because they dug around in it for a couple of hours, looking for holes or tears that needed to be repaired. Struggling to see has been tiring and stressful. And it also made reading and writing extremely difficult. Needless to say, I was unable to blog.
Then, I came down with a bad cold/flu bug. Apparently, undergoing surgery after surgery, followed by weeks of cortisone/steroid treatment, weakened my immune system. I was feeling battle-weary. But I am so grateful for God’s healing touch and goodness.
The overwhelming darkness of blindness
As I said, nearly going blind in one eye was scary. The nearly total blackness was overwhelming.
All of this has made me grateful for light. A detached retina cannot capture and send light to the optic nerve, resulting in blindness. My brief and partial experience with it made me realize that total darkness is probably one of the most terrible aspects of hell. I can’t imagine the anguish of being in complete darkness, especially the spiritual darkness of being separated from God.
I’m equally certain that one of the greatest blessings of heaven is complete light, free of any darkness or shadow. Jesus is the light of the world and of the entire universe. Heaven will be a place of light and beauty, a holy place filled with His presence, glory, and light.
God is light and there is no darkness in Him at all. He has left us the light of His Word to guide us through this dark world. And His light will lead us through the darkest valley of all, the valley of the shadow of death.
I recently read that the valley of death is not completely dark. It cannot be because shadows cannot form without some source of light. There is shadow, but the Lord’s light is there, too, so we do not need to fear walking through it.
So should we fear the dark valleys we sometimes go through in this life? The Lord never abandons His children and His light will always be with us, no matter how deep and dark the valleys.
I thank the Lord that I didn’t lose my sight. I thank Him, too, that because even if I were to lose it, I could never be “twice blind,” as a blind Christian I knew once said. Our eyes may go blind, but in Christ we have “eyes to see and ears to hear.”
This experience has made me yearn for more light, especially as I see the world growing darker. I plan to return to my Bible school studies soon. I need the Lord and the light of His Word more and more as time goes by.
“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
John 8:12
Signora Sheila 
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