4 Hours a Day

Four hours. That's how long we paste a patch over little Lucy's eye each day. It's hard and easy all at once. It's an offering. Here, God, we'll patch like eyes were made for patches. I always feel sort of like I'm putting a band-aid on the whole affair. Sometimes I wonder if God gave me this tiny hand hold of control just to feel like I'm helping. It's sort of like the way I let Janie stir the cookie dough.

Our appointment was yesterday. Small black plots on a graph, so unimpressive, and yet so startling. Her bad eye scored 20/47, the tippy top of the developmental curve! The good eye scored 20/90. Her GOOD eye actually lags slightly behind the BAD eye (though still well within the range of normal).

So when something miraculous happens, what do you do? I have no praise grand enough, no heart pure enough. I guess in a way I fear the Lord more that he can so matter of factly give vision to my child. Even writing it sounds funny. Give vision?! Who does that? Nah, let's not bring flowers this time; let's just pluck a few stems of sight to bring instead. All the while the cataract planted in the middle of her glassy lens worships God. Who knew the very imperfection would be the glory of glories. Sight in the face of all odds. Oh to be so imperfect.


A Journey of Eight Years

Partial

Dr. Snow. His name doesn't capture the years of schooling, research, and excellence of his practice. He speaks with the precision of a scalpel. I respect the formal manner. The room is all gray and clean.

"Yes. It's a cataract," long pause and unbroken gaze into the portal of Lucy's eye. He doesn't flinch, "A partial." Emotionless and grounded all at once, he looks up, "It's nothing you could have done."

The next weeks littered with appointments and smudged with fear, his words echo back to me, nothing you could've done, a small mercy. I could also mention how he stilled the busy office to offer a prayer for us, but then it might seem God was only there for a moment.

In a few minutes now we head to another appointment far from home. Lucy sucks her thumb with the devotion of a practiced athlete and I wonder if it will be enough. Devotion is like that thumb never offering strength until the very moment we need it. I wonder what we will need today.

The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the LORD has made them both.

Congenital Cataract

Those first four months she seemed so normal. She cooed; she smiled. Her big blue eyes made my heart swim.

Then the tear ducts were blocked for weeks until one September day they spontaneously burst and unplugged. A swamp of goo the color of sprouted wheat disappeared from all around Lucy's eyes. I wanted to sing and kiss the morning air. I jogged instead for miles crisp and fresh as an apple. Each wrangled tree branch tightened into focus as I ran and sucked in smoky tangles of fall air.

October, I almost didn't go. The appointment was to examine her plugged ducts. No slime or swampy fluids pooled up around her lakes of eyes any more. Cured I thought.

Somehow though, I went to the appointment anyway. No reason, I just went. And then there it was: the cataract. A smudge the shape of a sail warbled over the tiny lens of her eye. Congenital, there from birth.

We patched it, the good eye that is. They call it ocular seclusion. It forces the brain to strengthen neurons associated with the bad eye.

















So, there we are last October waiting to see if our baby will need eye surgery. It's not the sort of thing you plan for really. You know, wondering if they will give her a plastic implant or just go with contacts on a five month old, well, after ultrasonically shattering her original lens and sucking it out through an itty bitty straw. Eye surgery?!

Bubbles

In protest of forty degrees and rain, one sunny afternoon.











































































































































Bubbles:

1/4 c. Joy dishsoap
1 c. warm water
1 sunny afternoon

Gently mix and enjoy.

Africa Pt. 5

Africa - The Journey Begins.
















I open my mouth, and nothing. Sigh. I've stared at the fire until the warbled flames blur into orange fuzz. "Honey, I think you should go." The words tumble out like pebbles in the surf. The air almost fizzes, "Kenya."

Craig, fallen asleep in the warm sigh of our fireplace, stirs, a throw pillow munched into his stubbly cheek. He groans and sucks in a mile of air. Tides of sleep ebb.

"Hi, Bethany," his eyes squeeze shut.

Then in another wave of courage I blurt it out, full voice, "I think you should go."

He stretches. A long spool of breath unrolls.

Courage, isn't that the unsteady peek around a dark alley when you're already afraid? So there, surrounded by wood paneling and old burber carpet, I jab my toe into his sleep softened side, "Hey, Kenya."

It sounds like a pretend word and an imaginary place. Now suddenly I am sending my husband far over the rainbow to Kenya. So marks the beginning and end of me.

Even so, fear is a beacon in the sifting sand of emotion. It's a megaphone calling out, Now! This is it, GO! Now is the moment you've waited for. Be BRAVE. Everything matters in that one moment. The world is clear, concise, simple.

Kenya.

Fear is a radio active dye setting my whole circulatory system a glow. For a moment I see who I really am. Sweat on my brow, heart pounding, a tight balled up breath in my chest, the persistent nudge of fear reminds me, stand a little taller, step a little closer, and look him square in the eyes. "Yeah, go."

Far and away, half around the world Craig will simply go. It's such a small word. It doesn't capture the half liter of air that catches in the back of my throat. I marvel at the audacity of God. Africa really? Without me? Really? Yup.

My husband receives arsenals of vaccines, sends for a passport, calculates a budget, and I wonder, how many times have I missed this astonishing ride on the coat tails of God Almighty. I keep thinking of Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia - he is a very good lion, but not necessarily a safe lion. That sums it up.

Besides, safety is only what you see looking back when you haven't yet died. It is the stubbornly persistent illusion that we are in control at all. What great adventures and wild depths of God's glory have I missed holed up all these years in the safety of my salvation.

So terrified? Fully and not at all, but what's eternal salvation if you don't take it out for a spin or two.

Yes God, we're game. Count us in.

The Fun Run

I bundled up three little runners for the St. Paddy's Day Fun Run. Here is the moment before I realize my keys are lost. Then I find them only to get lost looking for the race location, turn around twice, ask directions twice and then arrive late with no umbrella to a rain slicked track and lots of wind. Ahh, it's a wonderful life.
























When we pulled up into a gravely wide spot in the road and parked, Janie blurted, "Oh, is this the half-marathon?!" My heart was racing so hard at the thought of missing the Fun Run after all her hard training it felt like a half-marathon. We piled out of the car, squinted against the rain and RAN all of us around the track.

















Half-marathon, here we come!

















Daddy met us there.
























All her diligent training, we bought her a shirt which she then insisted on wearing for three days straight, even slept in it. Finally, I coaxed it into the laundry.

















Oh, everyone got ribbons!

Crescendo

And so, in we plunge.

Landed now on the far side of sensibility, I sigh. I laugh. I wait even yet to see God's next move. All the average-ness in me wells up into something more.

Yes. Go, Craig. Go to the ends of the Earth in obedience to God. And really, would I want you any other way? You defy the gravity of sensibility and become the man I want our son to be.

Oh that not a day would go by without stumbling into fissures of God's plan. I am in uncharted territory. And, somehow it is freeing and obvious that I am not the author of its success. What hilarious grace that God even bestows us with the honor of coming along in His work.


Africa - The Journey Begins.