eye emergencies

I can name exactly one good thing about eye emergencies:  I married an eye doctor.

This usually gives me ultra-primo front-of-the-line care…like when Carina took a nose dive off the merry-go-round at preschool and landed on her face, with an eyeful of mulch.  Fifteen minutes later (and a whole bunch of screaming), all was better.  Or the Thanksgiving when things got a little too rowdy in the grandparents’ basement, and a flying balloon cut Jacob in the eye.  He was back in time for all the food and festivities.

But when what looked like a minor injury turned into a major one, we were an hour away from home, at the beginning of an hour-long dinner followed by a three-hour show.  And I was the one with the eye emergency.  Six hours of excruciating pain later, and I was wondering why hubby didn’t carry an eye emergency kit with him wherever he went.  Especially when the first thing he did when we got to his office was to put a blessed numbing drop in my eye that immediately took all the pain away.

I’ve been thinking about that numbing drop.  You see, I’ve had a bit of time to think as I’ve lain around not seeing.  Wouldn’t it be nice to have a numbing drop for life?  When things get too painful or difficult, just take a few drops and float away in happiness for awhile…but I suppose that’s been tried a million times over, with never good results.  The bad thing about numbing drops is that they always wear off, leaving you with the same pain as before.  You’re just delaying the inevitable.

I found it interesting that when Chris gave me the numbing drops to take home, he said, “Be careful how often you use these, because using them too much will delay your healing.”  Isn’t that true with emotional pain as well?  We can ignore and put off dealing with it, but it is still there under the surface, and repeatedly “numbing” the pain just delays the healing.  It doesn’t make the problem go away.

Facing my problems is scary.  Especially because facing the problems often turns into facing up to my own shortcomings and insecurities.  Sometimes I don’t want to numb the pain, but my mind does it for me anyway.  I get frustrated with my own brain because it won’t do what I want it to do.  It seems to have a mind of its own, and it decides when to numb and when to allow the pain.

I am the kind of person that likes deadlines and bulleted lists to follow.  So learning that life is really just a series of hurts and healings, nothing ever completely finishing before something else pops up, is really a difficult concept to take.  I want nice, clean beginnings and endings; I want to know that my eye will be better on such-and-such a date, and my heart will be healed on such-and-such a date.  But our hearts are never fully healed, which is why it is even more important to be the bride of the Great Physician.

“If I keep my eyes on God, I won’t trip over my own feet.”  Psalm 25:15