See Glass

By: Joske Malloy

A while back I read an interesting article of how you can determine the age of sea glass, purple sea glass being one of the oldest types of glass made. I am a beach scavenger so whenever I walk, I tend to find treasures the sea released to the land. So this morning I handed God my wish to find purple sea glass so I could make some jewelry with it (one of my latest hobbies).

Two weeks ago I had an eye operation for a macular hole, a procedure that seems to be rather common and minor, a surgery with very favorable statistics on results. However, it happened to be on eye and it had to do with my eyesight, something I need for just about everything I do. The recovery instructions post operation were that I had to maintain my head parallel to the floor, face down day and night for the first three days and for the following three weeks sleep on my stomach to assure my head stayed parallel to the floor.

Before my surgery I was tense and concerned about recovering my eyesight as well as the operation. Being a nurse and having worked as one had revealed much of what can go wrong. Nonetheless, the operation lasted a little over an hour and they told me it was successful.

Then the recovery process kicked in; taking medication, keeping my head parallel to the ground and finding my way around. We are creatures that walk with our head held high and now I had to walk with my head bowed low, a humbling and uncomfortable experience. I had learned to depend on my eyes, but now I had to depend on others because I could not see very well. Added to that was the restless anxiety of how the surgery really had turned out and if I would be able to recuperate my eyesight and live life as I knew it.

The day after, on my visit to the doctor, she rebuked me, saying cataracts were forming because I did not follow her post operational instructions. Really!? It is my eye, if I can recover my full sight by following instructions, nothing in me hesitated to do so. I felt disheartened, worse fear started oozing in; I was probably the exception, the small percentile to not recover my eye sight. This fear slowly grew into a monster the following two weeks. It was as if a tangible substance was clawing away on the inside at everything I thought to be true.

Although I did what I knew, the past weeks to hold high my banner that God is my Healer, and kept reminding myself of His Word so full of promises on seeing, the struggle was intense. This morning, after another night of little sleep flat on my stomach, I woke up and felt I could hardly stand it any longer. I decided to take a walk on the beach. It was early, the sun was coming up announcing another beautiful sunny day in paradise.

In deep thought, I started picking up sea glass. As I did I realized; glass is what you see through, it requires eye sight. As I continued on down the beach my eyes suddenly fell on a piece of blue sea glass and a few steps further down, guess what … a piece of purple sea glass. How about that? God immediately honored my silly simple prayer of finding purple sea glass. That is when I knew that if He did that, how would He not restore my full eyesight, so I would see better than ever before? This was such a tangible assurance, warm comfort, and glorious victory given to me by my precious Father. That awful tormenting spirit of fear disappeared in a blink of an eye. I now know, beyond doubt that I will see better than ever before.