Nathan's Miracle

I sat in my now familiar spot in the eye doctor's office.  We were just there to update prescriptions from a year ago.  It's becoming somewhat of a juggling act to get 4-5 kids to the eye doctors on the same day.  This day was no different and I was texting and talking to Wendell who had to pick Emma up early from her volunteer position at the library to get her to Dr. Lloyd's with the rest of us.

They moved us from room to room to keep the flow up with all the kids.  I just kept following whoever was next to get their eyes checked.

Anson had gone first and except for being very near-sighted (he's my child) his condition is kinda ho-hum.  Dr. Haggard, who is an optometrist at the clinic has never seen my kids before.  As he looked at Nate's chart he was surprised that Nathan was notably far-sighted.

"Wow," he said, "you're very different than your brother!"

I told him that three of my children had macular degeneration.  Nathan was one of those.  "All of my kids with macular degeneration are far-sighted," I mentioned.  Although I could tell that Dr. Haggard totally got what a sobering diagnosis this is, since I was nonchalant about it, he just went ahead with the vision screening.

Dr. Lloyd popped in when Nate was about half done and gave Dr. Haggard a more thorough low-down on what had happened with our kids.  As Dr. Haggard was testing Nathan's right eye, Mike (Dr. Lloyd) and I fell silent.  The best we had ever gotten Nate's right eye to see was 20/40.  As we approached that point, we were interested to see what would happen.

Nathan sailed right through the 20/40 line.  He got every letter correct!  And again on 20/30.  He even got most of the letters on 20/25 line right!

"This is the best he's ever done with this eye!" I enthused.  "It's amazing."

My words were so inadequate for what I was feeling.  I wanted to be like the woman in Ephriam's Rescue after she made it across the river.  I wanted to raise my hand and say, "I want everyone in this room to know that you have witnessed a MIRACLE."

But I didn't really need to say it.  Both Mike and Dr. Haggard got it.  "Thank the Lord," said Dr. Haggard.  I mentioned something about divine intervention.

It confounds medical science that a boy with a lesion in his eye and fluid under his retina should be able to see 20/20 when using both of his eyes.  In fact, all of my children see 20/20.  And three have fluid under their retinas.  Every doctor who sees them ends up shaking his head.  It makes no sense.

Then there's this little matter of, why us?  Why do we get this miracle? It seems like so many around us are suffering and struggling.  Why do we get the miracle?

Then I think, who am I to question God's will?  I  can only be incredibly grateful that He has seen fit to bless us in this way.  I suppose that for now we've learned what we need to know.  I am grateful for the lessons and the blessings.