Seeing Through New Eyes

I have been wanting to write about my eyes and I'm finally sitting down to do it.  I have had a lazy eye, strabismus to be exact, since I was born.  Basically, my eyes don't work together.  After several surgeries when I was very young and patching and glasses, they finally dubbed me "better" when I was in fourth grade.  I never have really felt completely better because my right eye still wanders.

At first it would only wander very rarely, especially when I was tired, but in the last few years it has become more present.

It is always easy for me to tell when it is wandering because when I talk to people, they look behind themselves to see what I'm looking at.  I try to not care, but if I'm being honest, it's pretty embarrassing.  I try to force my eye to look at them, but I can't.  I usually just end up not looking at them at all so that they don't get confused.

If it was just cosmetic, maybe I wouldn't care, but it has started affecting my vision.  I don't feel safe driving at night because my depth perception is very poor.   I just feel like overall, I'm not seeing as well.

A few years ago I went to an eye doctor, hoping for answers, and he basically told me that there was nothing that could be done, so I accepted that and just kind of stopped worrying about it and had other people drive me when it was dark.

Then a few months ago I decided that I would try seeing an ophthalmologist and get another opinion. I found out that it would be $300 just for the visit so I settled on seeing a new optometrist.  I had my appointment in August and Dr. Kohler was so great.  He told me that an ophthalmologist would likely want to do surgery to correct the problem, but that I should try patching first.  He suggested that I patch my good eye for 4-5 hours every day to strengthen my bad eye.

I left the office and ordered some patches and was very motivated to avoid surgery and get better.  He gave me the hope that my eyes could get better and I was excited...that was until I patched for the first time, and the second, and the third.  It is awful!

I soon figured out that I can barely see out of my right eye.  While wearing the patch everything is really blurry and dull in color.  I can read, but it takes me about 5 times as long to decipher and decode (literally).  I would try to harvest the garden, but I couldn't see the colors well enough to know what was ripe.  I run into people, walls, babies, you name it, because my eye just isn't taking everything in.  There are definitely moments when I rip off the patch and throw little adult tantrums (usually in the form of eating chocolate) because I'm so frustrated.  Like when I'm prepping food and cut myself or when I'm trying to pull Eloise's hair into a ponytail and miss a huge chunk of hair or when I send texts that nobody can understand because of the combination of me misspelling and siri autocorrecting or when I step on a child or when I don't notice Everly destroying something.

After about 6 weeks of patching, I hadn't really seen any results.  Everything was still blurry and dull and I just was getting tired of patching for nothing.  I called the doctor and asked "are you sure you can't give me glasses so that everything won't be blurry???"  He was kind and said, just keep doing what you're doing, glasses won't help.

And then the general conference for my church came.  On the Saturday night session I went to the women's session alone and just soaked it all in.  Every talk felt like exactly what I needed to hear.  It felt like fears and worries were disappearing the spirit was so strong.  In the final talk our prophet, Russell M Nelson issued a challenge to all the women of the church.  The first was to take a 10 day fast from social media, which I definitely needed.

Then he issued a challenge for us to read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover, highlighting any verse that mentioned Jesus Christ.  I was scribbling down everything as fast as I could, feeling excited.  The last time a prophet challenged us to do this was when I was engaged to Zac and I didn't do it.  Ever since, I've been excited for another chance.

Here are his words:

"Second, I invite you to read the Book of Mormon between now and the end of the year. As impossible as that may seem with all you are trying to manage in your life, if you will accept this invitation with full purpose of heart, the Lord will help you find a way to achieve it. And, as you prayerfully study, I promise that the heavens will open for you. The Lord will bless you with increased inspiration and revelation.

As you read, I would encourage you to mark each verse that speaks of or refers to the Savior. Then, be intentional about talking of Christ, rejoicing in Christ, and preaching of Christ with your families and friends.2 You and they will be drawn closer to the Savior through this process. And changes, even miracles, will begin to happen."

As he said that last line, "changes, even miracles, will begin to happen" I felt a very overwhelming spiritual feeling.  The very distinct impression came to my mind, "if you will do this, you will see a miracle; your eye will be healed."  It was so powerful I just started to well up and shake.  The idea of having my eye be healed seemed too good to be true.  I kept thinking about it and realized that I would be reading with the patch on.  This made me cry more because I knew that it was going to be very difficult, but how could I not do it after that experience?

That was two weeks ago, yesterday.  Since that time I have already seen miracles taking place.  Every morning I get up at 5:30 to give myself time to read before the kids wake up.  I usually don't have time to read the 6 pages all at once so I finish during Everly's nap or later at night.  I shared the experience with Zac and the kids and they have all been so supportive.  Eloise came over once and told me, "I know it's hard mom, but don't take off the patch!  You can do it!"  Zac is always trying to help give me a few extra minutes by taking the kids downstairs so I can concentrate longer.  Other family members encourage me and help me remember to keep on working.

So far, I can't say that I'm getting a lot out of what I'm reading, I'm hoping that will come!  It's pretty much all I can do to figure out what the words are and recognize when it's talking about Christ.   Luckily, this isn't the first time I've read it so I can draw on past memories of comprehension.  

The first miracle happened a few nights after I started when I was tweezing my eyebrows.  All of the sudden there were two sets of tweezers!  I was seeing double, just for an instant.  Dr Kohler told me that seeing double was often a sign that things were starting to work.  I was ecstatic and knew that things were going in the right direction.  It has happened a few more times since then.

The second miracle occurred in the temple.  I was at a session about a week ago with the relief society and I had meant to bring and wear my patch because I had only worn it for about 2 hours that day.  I forgot it, so I just decided to cover my eye with my hand.  I must have been putting pressure on my eye because after I removed my hand,  my good eye couldn't see.  Everything was super super blurry, much worse then my "bad" eye.  I definitely had a silent panic attack that I had ruined my good eye forever and would become blind.  I had the thought come that I should force my "bad" eye to see and take over.  I felt like Harry Potter trying to focus on a complicated spell or Matilda trying to use her powers.  I stared at the temple worker at the front of the room and willed my bad eye to take over.  In a quick instant it did and things became more clear.  I did a silent jump for joy in my chair and tried again and again.  I started being able to hold my gaze with my bad eye and learned what it felt like for it to take over.  

After a few minutes, my good eye could see perfectly fine again and so I couldn't switch.  I just pushed on it again to make it blurry so I could keep practicing.  By the end of the session I was able to switch back and forth from eye to eye, even when my good eye wasn't blurry.  My head was throbbing and everything got blurry and my eyes were screaming at me to stop.  It was like doing p90x after not working out for a few months, my muscles were exhausted.  I was on cloud 9 though.  I came home and jumped on the bed and said, "Zac, watch this, what are my eyes doing!"  and I showed him how I could switch.  I don't think other people can comprehend what a huge deal this is.  My right eye is just usually there, doing nothing, while the left eye does all the work,  the doctor said it only is accounting for about 20% of what I see.  Being able to control it is an amazingly huge step for me.  It was so exciting and I couldn't fall asleep forever that night.


Here are some super unflattering pictures of me that show me putting each eye in charge.  My right eye is the struggling one and my left is the dictator in general.  I figure it will be good to take pictures along the way so I can measure differences and improvements.

I called my doctor and he was so excited for me and very surprised that I was suddenly seeing these results.  He definitely wants me to keep doing whatever I'm doing.  I feel like there are two parts, physically my eyes are being strengthened with the reading, it's like an intense workout everyday, of course that will strengthen my eye.  But I know that my obedience to follow the prophet will multiply any results that would have been brought by just reading any old book for an hour every morning.  

I know that this isn't the end of the miracles that will happen for me if I keep working hard.  I feel so blessed to be able to have this experience.  If I hadn't been born with this eye dysfunction, I would have never been able to have these incredible experiences and feel so close to my Father in Heaven.  I guess I am seeing, first hand, why we need to have trials in our lives.  They really are blessing...eventually.