Well, I can’t help but laugh and be humbled when a friend tells his mother about possibly moving in with me, and upon hearing my name says, “the James Denham?” in response to the fact that she somehow has been reading my blog!  It is these kinds of things that truly humble me.  And make me joyous too.  I get to communicate to so many people, as do the people whose blogs I read.

Well that is my aside.  What I have been thinking about lately is my eyes.  Literally, my eyes.  During my employee physical, a number of things happened- blood drawn, a TB test shot, MMR immunization, Tetanus update immunization shot, movement tests, and drug screening.  But even with the dreaded shots and my stifling fear of needles, it was the vision test that had me anxious.

So, I was asked to look with both eyes and read the bottom line of that letter lined poster paper 15 feet away, with all its gloriously random T’s and V’s and E’s and P’s and D’s falling in rank together .  I read all the lines, even the bottom with the greatest of ease.  And then I was asked to place my left hand over my left eye, and I read the letters perfectly, even down to the bottom line.  Then I was asked to put my right hand over my right eye, and by this time I knew the letters on the bottom because I am a pretty sly guy with good memory (it is fairly easy for me to remember license plates I see- gloriously random alpha-numeric labels seem to be easily memorized in my head).  But something was different this time.  And panic set in as I realized that this time I could only remember the letters, but I could barely see the third line of 7.  The bottom lines faint, the middle lines blurred.  It didn’t seem real.  I have always had perfect 20/20 vision and been a benefactor of it- played sports all the time, and depended on my eyesight to be such a good (wink wink), disciplined (wink wink) and oft ticketed driver.  It has been the base of my confidence and surety.  And given the choice of a sense to keep with all the others going down, I would keep my sight.  It is precious to me.  But this time.  But these last four lines I couldn’t decipher.  Panic truly set in.

Immediately I was internally unseated as my mind began churning the possibilities: it is a simple loss for the day, I must have slept on my stomach with my head on hands and a hand in the eye…my eye surely is just inflamed or has something in it…I’m losing my eyesight fast because of some disease…I’m going blind in days….aaaaaaaa…..I’m gonna be blind by church tonight….aaaaaaaaaa….I’m gonna die! No, it didn’t get that far, but it did get to the blindness.  It sure scared me.  It sure made me anxious.  I have never worn glasses, never even worn contacts because I can’t stomach putting something that close to my eyes- seriously I can’t even give myself eyedrops of Visine.  Yes, you can say the obvious, I am a pathetic man.

But the loss of sight.  The possibility of losing my sight for good.  That possible future, now ever possibly real, is bleak, or in other words, coming into view. But what is more  than this, and probably the more serious, is the move towards gratitude.  I won’t go blind by next week (yeesh, I might want to strike that just in case).  But it has created in me a new sense of gratitude for the thing that I treasure so much that I don’t ever acknowledge.  I can be grateful about my sight because the reality is such that it may not always be there.  I can sing praises to God for his wonderful creation of sight, for I have seen some really majestic stuff in my days: the Alps near Interlaken Switzerland, the Arizona desert, the Grand Canyon, that stream in the Sierra Nevadas, morning sunrise at the beach, that girl I liked in college, a snowball fight, the bricks colored siena at sunset in the city named after that brick color at sunset in Italy- Siena.  Indeed, thank you God for my sight, and not simply for my sight but for my taste, and for my hearing, and for my touch, and for my smell.  I thank you God for the gifts I have received through those senses, for those senses are only gifts at the moment.