What Else Could It Be?

I had a good feeling about yesterday, and it turned out to be pretty stinking nice.

The Boss had a tolerable day at work, and we went to the eye doctor. By my count, this guy was the eighth doctor that I have seen about my eyes in the last five years. It never fails. They hear my history, shrug a little and say "Let me take a look". Then I put my head up to the microscope and they turn on the light and inevitably exclaim something similar to "Wow". Occasionally I get a "Hmmm", but mostly it's "Wow". My favorite is waiting for the techs who do the initial exams to try a peek. I've heard more than one tech spout off without thinking, "That's really bad!"

It's ok, I've heard it before.

They also like to tell me how unusual it is for a cornea to go into rejection within the first month after transplant. But they do it with a questioning tone that says "Are you sure you're not putting me on?".

"Nope, I really went into rejection within three weeks."

"Did they put you on steroids?"

"Enough to shame Barry Bonds"

"And injection?"

"Close to twenty of 'em. And oral steroids. And intravenous. And about seven different eye drops." (That usually spins their heads like in the exorcist).

This kid (who looked about 12 years old) yesterday looked at the topographical chart of my eyes and freaked out.

"Are you sure your doctor told you to get contacts? Your astigmatism is awfully steep. Glasses might be a better fit for you."

"Do you know what glasses with my prescription cost?" I asked him.

"Oh, yeah. I guess those would run you about three hundred at the discount stores."

"Tell me about it. The insurance crooks...er.. company covers the cost of contacts."

Then he tried to convince me that contacts were a real pain in the neck. I wanted to say to him, "Yeah, it's even worse when you are allergic to the soft lenses", but I didn't.

Maybe I should have, because he then got really adamant about convincing me that contacts were sometimes difficult to use and required significant investments in effort and attention to care.

I admit I kinda wanted to slap him upside the head. Some how I kept from saying, "Do you have any idea about the time and effort that have been put into the care of my eyes? Do you know how crippling this has been to my family, to my standard of living, my self-esteem? Do you know how long I've wandered around in an impressionist painting? Don't talk to me about "effort" and "care", Pal. If it takes an hour a day to put 'em in and an hour a day to take 'em out, I think I can manage to fit it into my freaking schedule!"

The front half of my tongue may never grow back, but I kept from being a jerk. It's a good thing that the Boss was in the hallway trying to sort out her third call from work at the time, or she might have skinned the kid and used his pelt for a cellphone cover.

Anyway, once I convinced him that my doc really did want me to get contacts, I finally got to see the real doctor. He hit me with the numbing drops that always make my lids feel stuck together, looked into the microscope and said...

"Huh"

Gets 'em every time.

He went over my chart, asked suspiciously if I was sure that the doc wanted lenses for both eyes, and excused himself from the room to read my doctors notes.

I looked in the general direction of where the Boss was sitting.

"Ain't sounding too positive, is it?"

"Have faith" she replied wisely.

The Doctor came back in with a box of sample 'fitting' lenses and said "Let's see what we can do".

He tinkered around in the box for a minute, found what he wanted and stuck it to my right eye.

Now over the years I have lost a lot of my blink reflex. When people are jamming fingers, lenses, probes, pressure gauges, needles, and scalpels in your face five or ten times a week, you learn not to blink much. But my self-imposed boycott of the medical profession seems to have allowed it to return with a vengeance, because he stuck that lens in and my lid clamped down like a prison door and refused to open. While he went back to the box of lenses for the left eye, I tried blinking it open, but it had watered up pretty good and I wasn't seeing much of anything.

The doctor came back over and opened my left eye, had me look straight ahead, and stuck a lens on.

I blinked. The lens shifted. I blinked again.

And then I saw the most beautiful thing in the Lord's vast universe.

Sitting twenty feet away, in the most stunning clarity I am capable of imagining... sat my spectacular, shinning, sainted, wife.

I must have stared, because she laughed.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"Just reflecting on the fact that the first thing I've seen in nearly half a decade is the most perfect sight in all creation."

That one made her cry (Sorry sweetie, had to be written).

I live my whole life to a hundred years, I'll not forget that sudden shift in perception. With a day to reflect on it I've come to a couple of conclusions.

First, it was not a coincidence and it was not medical science that provided that moment, it was a miracle promised to me in a priesthood blessing so many years ago. As I said yesterday, what difference between clay and plastic?

It was also not a coincidence that what I saw was the Boss. All the years she's suffered and sacrificed, and worked herself to death, and I'm the one who's rewarded with an image of her as she really is.

How do you pay that back?

Third, there is a spiritual parallel to blindness (Yeah, I know, of course there is or the Savior wouldn't have used it himself. But it got a little personal for me yesterday). We come to this earth having forgotten all we knew in the pre-existence. Our test (this life) is like a maze. We look at it from ground view and all we see are walls, dead ends and more obstacles. How do we get to the end?

We require guides who see the end from the beginning. Who looks on the maze from above?

We have to pray for personal revelation; study the scriptures and seek the council of Prophets and Priesthood leaders, then learn to listen to the Holy Ghost for guidance before we can begin to understand why we are here and how we can successfully return to our Father in Heaven's presence.

If we do these things, we find our way past the obstacles and onto the straight and narrow path that leads to Eternal Salvation.

And every once in a while, for some reason or another, something changes. Be it the need to overcome trials, intense study, or simply as a reward for increasing faith, the Lord applies a spiritual contact lens and for a brief moment we get to glimpse the world as it really is. The way that he sees it, in it's perfection. A second of eternal perspective from above the maze that allows us the rare chance to know the beginning from the end.

How do you pay that back?

It only lasted a moment. Much too short in retrospect. I could have stared all day. Lots of things I wanted to see. But the tests had to be done and then it was time to take the lens out. I wish I'd have shut my eye and stumbled out the door with it.

But I got a glimpse of what I used to know, a view of eternity sitting twenty feet away, and it was worth it.

Then the doctor promised that by next Friday, he'd have a pair of lenses that I could take home to test. 20/30 in the left eye. 20/25 in the right.

I'll be patient. Miracles from the Lord are worth waiting for.

I'll eventually have my vision that clear all the time. And my eyes will work again, too.



I can hardly wait.