A Change in Perspective

I sit at my computer this morning, looking outside at the rain coming down. It's beautiful. I can see the texture of the grass in the yard below me, the mud clumps on the gravel road, the tufts of soggy weeds sticking out of the hayfield. I see the flowing water in the creek at the edge of the woods, then the tall, leafless trees climbing up the hill. The individual branches are clear, although they try and blend in with the splotchy background of the leaf-covered ground and fallen logs that create a puzzle of muted colors and shapes.

Then I take off my glasses. The yard now looks like a yellow and green blob. The road's blurry enough it could almost be a stream, although the lines are too clear-cut. The hayfield has different colors, but texture is nonexistent. The creek is so far away it could be a rock. The trees are wide and unclear, like pale arms with outspread fingers planted on the hillside.

It was a year ago today that I first put on my glasses and watched the world shift into focus around me. Everything became smaller. Clearer. Crisper. Brighter. The first time I went shopping at a big store wearing my glasses I got a headache from the brightness and details around me.

Do you know what the crazy part is? I had no clue I needed glasses until one day when my brother handed me his and said I should try them on. Putting them on that night I literally gasped with surprise as I watched the stars light up and become little pin-points of brilliant light instead of blobs with a light glow.

I went to the eye doctor and he said my eyes were fine. So, I went home without any glasses.

The next year and a half were spent with me begging to wear my brother's glasses during different activities. At church (which had always been a struggle due to the bad headaches I got each week), I would put my hand out and he would indulgently take his glasses off and hand them to me. Slipping them on the words on the projector would suddenly be readable and the pastor's face would transform from a palette of various hues into eyes, a nose, and a mouth.

When we were driving at night my brother would ask me to read a sign, and after my squinted attempts he would hand me his glasses and I would giggle with happiness as blurred colors snapped into words.

After each one of my gleeful moments of wearing his glasses, my brother would shake his head and tell me, "You really need to get glasses of your own." Then one day he asked, "Lydia, how come you did so well on your eye test?" I responded that when I squinted enough, I could read at a much greater distance. "You're not supposed to squint when you're doing any eye examine," my brother shook his head at me. Oops. I always thought you were supposed to do your very best at any test...

Then one day I was visiting my sister who I hadn't seen in a while and she asked me what time it was. I had to go nearly across the room before I could squint up and see the time on the clock. "Did you really have to get that close?" she questioned. When I affirmed that I did, she told me that I really needed to go to the eye doctor again.

By this time my mind was made up. We set an appointment and when we arrived Mom told the assistant, a long-time friend of hers, that we were going to get glasses today because I needed them. She agreed and informed the doctor. That meant we only needed to figure out what glasses I needed.

Well, during this test I didn't squint but I still thought I did quite well. In fact, I wondered briefly if I was going to be told I had fine eyesight. That is until I found out that the letters I'd been reading off with assurance were actually not the letters on the chart. So I did need the glasses.

This year has been my most headache free year since I was a little girl. Instead of daily thumping in my skull I only get a bad headache every few weeks. Each day I'm thankful and amazed at how much of a difference the glasses have made in my life. I now throughly enjoy church without my head pounding from trying to focus so hard on blurry images. A whole new world has been opened up to me, a world full of details and lines and possibilities.

I literally can see buds and raindrops on the branches outside the other window. And that, is a gift.