Our youngest son Elijah just got glasses. We had no idea he had any trouble seeing. At three years old they can’t really tell you things like that. We took him to his three-year old well visit in March and the doctor had a new technology where you can take a picture of the child’s face with this special camera and it measures things on the face. It indicated Elijah might have an issue with one of his eyes, so we took him to the eye doctor. Turns out he can see almost perfectly in his right eye but sees almost nothing out of his left. He has been like that since birth and his brain has compensated so much for the lack of vision in his left eye that we never noticed a problem. So, now he has glasses. The doctor said since we caught this so early we may be able to fix it completely with the glasses and he may not need glasses when he gets older.

When Elijah did the eye exam, they used a letter chart, but instead of letters there were pictures on it. He did most of the lines perfectly with this right eye, but only the top two with his left. He is very nearsighted. He can only see what is right in front of his face. As I thought about it, I realized I am like that most of the time. I cannot see what is ahead of me I can only see what is right in front of me right now. In some ways that is a good thing. We shouldn’t worry about tomorrow, but when you are going through a hard time in your life, only seeing what is right now can be a bad thing. You get bogged down thinking things will never change and will always be hard. I have felt that way a lot lately with our daughter. She is really a challenge right now and it’s hard to believe it will ever change. But one thing about life is that it doesn’t ever stay the same, it’s always changing. It will be different in the future with our daughter, I hope better, but I don’t know really. But right now it brings me comfort to know this season of our life will end and another will begin at some point. She will not always battle us about everything, at some point things will get easier. We are working on getting her to see a psychiatrist right now so that we can see if she might have some underlying condition that is contributing to the behavior issues. Things will change. And God is the only one who can see that end of all this. He knows what the future holds and he is preparing us for it. Glenn and I regularly say this is the hardest thing we have ever done and we have been through some hard times in our lives. But we know that God is going to use this season of our lives to grow us and prepare us for whatever is next. I can say I can already see that it has made us better parents to our son Joshua with his special needs. And that is a good thing. We are working on some of his bad behaviors now because we now see what is cute at 4 years old can become a huge problem at 11, if it’s not addressed. We can see further down the road with Joshua than we could before from having our daughter. We can see how disabling it is to a child to allow them to do whatever they want and to not hold them to high standards just because they have a disability. So, for that I am grateful. God does have a plan and while I can only see what is right in front of me right now, he can see the whole picture and He is working things out for a good end.