Last week I drove down to my hometown in the suburbs of Chicago on Saturday for a run honoring my brother. After the race on Sunday husband John warned me that I needed to get on the road back to Minneapolis early because of my “condition”.
I have “night blindness” which means I have no depth perception when it gets dark. My perspective is flat. Skewed. I can’t tell how far or close things are (You know, like cars, or stoplights, or the shoulder of the road – the little things.) And I can’t anticipate turns in the road. So when I didn’t leave Chicago until after 1:00 and hit bad traffic it meant driving the last two hours in deep darkness.
In the dark my eyes play tricks on me. My emotions play tricks on me. It feels kind of like being on that Disney World roller coaster in the dark that has a name with “Terror” in the title. There are times when I’m sure I’m driving off the road into certain destruction. Really.
For anyone, in the days of loss – loss of person, job, dream – weird shapes loom and threaten in the darkness. It can feel very scary. Nothing is certain. Life feels unpredictable.
As I concentrated hard and prayed, it struck me how all of us have “night blindness” . Whether it’s the dark of discouragement and challenging circumstances, or the illusion of control and self-sufficiency, or a hill on the route of our personal marathon, we don’t see things as they really are – as only God sees them. Continue reading
