Seeing Clearly

I’m not one who likes to admit I need help. I generally try to tough my way through whatever problem I might be facing. I’m one of those who are reluctant to admit that I might be sick and need to rest. I take a lot of convincing before deciding it’s worthwhile to go to the doctor. 

This frustrates Elizabeth. She’s never quite sure if she can trust my account of how I’m feeling. She looks at me suspiciously whenever I say, “Everything’s fine.” I think she feels sometimes that she’s being cheated out of opportunities to care for me by my refusal to admit that I’m sick.

This past week hasn’t helped matters. A week and a half ago I hit myself in the head with a prybar. This was not a light tap—it was pulling the prybar into my forehead with all of my strength. I was trying to pry a bicycle hoist off the rafters in the garage and the prybar slipped out, resulting in said collision with my forehead. This explains the gash that appeared over my eye two Sundays ago.

At the time, I was surprised there was not more blood. And after sitting for awhile, the headache subsided and I was able to get back to work. But here’s how the incident unfolded to begin with: when I installed the hoists about ten years ago, I stripped the screws, making it impossible to take them out. I should have started by trying a vice-grip locking pliers on them, but my first thought was to drill through the screws to weaken them. This proved harder than I had hoped as my cordless screwdriver is near the end of its life, and at some point I decided to stop trying to drill and start trying to pry.

I counted myself fortunate that the injury was not more severe, and even took our daughters out that evening on some adventures. Everything was fine, except there was a nagging scratchy feeling on my eyelid. I checked three or four times to see if some sawdust or something else had fallen into my eye, but didn’t find anything. I chalked it up to swelling that must have happened from the impact of the prybar.

Only the scratchiness didn’t subside. And indeed, I woke up on Tuesday morning that next week and my eye was bright red. And super-sensitive to light. And the vision was kinda blurry. And I had a pounding headache. Elizabeth told me to go to the doctor. I said I’d go if things didn’t improve the next day. The next day they were marginally better. I didn’t go to the doctor. Each day since then, they were slightly better—just enough to convince me I didn’t need to go to the doctor. I rested a little more than usual, and looked up concussion symptoms and best treatments.

Finally Tuesday of this week, a week and a half after the initial incident, a doctor came to me. A friend of mine who is an ER doctor stopped by, and I took the opportunity to ask him about my eye. He took a look and said, “Well…you mean besides the piece of metal stuck in there?” I didn’t believe him. He said, “No, really…there’s a piece of metal in your cornea.” I told him I had looked in my eye about a dozen times and hadn’t found anything. Granted—I was looking more at the eyelid and not at the eye itself, but still… But once he said it was there, and I went back to the mirror and looked again, when the light caught it just right, sure enough—there was indeed a tiny piece of metal in my eyeball. No wonder it had been scratchy for the past week and a half.

I asked him if he could take it out, and he said he’d have to remove the plank from his own eye first. And then he said I’d need to go to the eye doctor.

So the next morning I made a call, and when I mentioned the words “foreign object in my cornea” (as my doctor friend had instructed me to do), they were able to get me in within a few hours. They were also able to get the metal out without too much difficulty, and on my way out made the comment, “So you had that thing in your eye for a week and a half?” Yep. I did. Because I refused to get help.

The good news is there shouldn’t be any long-term damage. And my headaches are much improved already. And my eyelid no longer feels scratchy. And while still slightly blurry, my vision is much-improved.

The whole incident has got me thinking, naturally. Obviously a fair bit about the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount about taking the plank out of your own eye before trying to remove the speck in another’s eye. I was pretty miserable with just a tiny piece of metal shaving in my eye—how could anyone possibly have a plank in their eye and leave it there? Of course, on one level Jesus’ words are hyperbole, but on another they aren’t. We do, actually, leave the figurative planks in our own eyes. We’re willing to put up with a lot that doesn’t belong in our lives—a lot that is destructive to us and to others. In part, perhaps, because we don’t want to do the hard work to change. In part, perhaps, because we don’t want to admit we might be wrong. In part, perhaps, because it’s hard to really examine oneself. In part, perhaps, because we’d rather judge others than judge ourselves.

Gratitude

The hard frost last week meant the end for our garden and for our zinnias, planted from the seeds from last Easter. We picked and ate all of our carrots – small and sweet, probably planted a little late. On Friday I spent most of the day taking out the garden and the zinnias and a few other annuals. The zinnias were tall! The ones in the backyard were like small trees and had to be chopped up before Jay could mow them into mulch. And the ones in the front flower boxes did not want to come out – it took a lot of wriggling and twisting and pulling to free them from the dirt.

The tomatoes too were a particular challenge. My working with them renewed Luna’s interest in them and although she hadn’t eaten too many all summer, it was hard to keep her away from the frost damaged fruit falling as I wrestled with the plants. Tomatoes make her sick, but she forgets this in the delight of being chased around the yard with one her mouth and the excitement of being told “Drop it!”

The plants were huge and viney and supported by a lot of different loops of twine connected to the back fence and the metal cages. Rogue vines had grown on both sides of the fence. Again, there was a lot of chopping and pulling involved and eventually two yard-bags full and tomato seeds everywhere. The basil plants were just dry stalks but still smelled wonderful as I added them to the bags.

I spent most of the day pulling and digging and cutting and I found myself giving thanks while I worked. Feeling deep gratitude for the zinnias – the bright and deep colors and blossoms had cheered us all summer in the yard and in bouquets inside. And gratitude for the tiny carrots, and the dusty smell of the basil, thinking of the pesto in the freezer for later this winter and all of the tomato basil recipes we tried this summer. And gratitude for the tomatoes – so good right from the garden and enough to share. I’m not sure I’ve felt thankful taking out the garden and flowers before.

I’ve been re-reading the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and gratitude is a theme in the book. I think the Spirit is using it to shape me – to help me be more thankful. One of the chapters in the book is about the Thanksgiving Address of the Onondaga Nation, also known as the Words that Come Before All Else. The Onondaga have a tradition of beginning every gathering with a litany of thanksgiving that includes all of creation. I wonder what it would be like if my first thoughts, my first words were gratitude. As I was reading through the Thanksgiving Address, I found myself thinking of the Psalm refrain ‘Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his love endures forever.’ Kimmerer notes that the Thanksgiving Address reminds you that you already have everything you need. ‘Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his love endures forever.’

Faith

I preached on Hebrews 11 this past Sunday. Hebrews 11 is the great chapter on the heroes of faith, and it’s one of those passages where you really just need to get out of the way and let the text preach itself. Verse 1 opens with “Now faith is the confidence of things hoped for and assurance about what we do not see.” (NIV) If you look around at different translations, you discover that the word for confidence here is sometimes translated “substance.” That is, “faith is the substance of things hoped for….” As if faith is the act of our hopes becoming manifest. Almost like our hopes lived out in our day to day lives.

What is really interesting here is that the Greek word for confidence is “hypostasis.” It’s the same word that's used in Hebrews 1:3 to talk about Jesus. The preacher says Jesus is the “hypostasis” of God’s being and in the NIV it’s translated as “exact representation.” That is, Jesus is the exact representation of God’s being. In other words, we see God the Father in and through Jesus. It is through Jesus that God the Father is made known.

I wonder if a bit of this same idea is at work with our faith? Faith is not meant to be something that is only in our head, but something that is lived out. Something that others can see by the way we live. Perhaps faith is a way of living that teaches others about God—that reveals our hopes. What if faith were the exact representation of our hopes? What if faith were the substance of our hope? What if faith were something that people could see in us and through us, to help them make sense of the hope we have in Jesus?