I feel I’m a lot like most other moms. I’m tired, a bit unsure, and sometimes goofy, but there is one major difference. I’m almost totally blind. I grew up sighted just like everybody else. In the third grade I developed near-sightedness and then later astigmatism, but it was never anything corrective lenses couldn’t fix. No doctor could have ever anticipated the darkness that would come for me.

My husband and I got engaged the summer after I graduated high school. It had been a long time waiting because he was a year older than me so we’d spent the last year apart and we had no intention of ever being separated again. The months that led up to the wedding I started getting frequent headaches. I remember carrying a bottle of Tylenol around with me, but I didn’t think anything of it. I was under a lot of family stress, taking summer classes, and planning a wedding so it just made sense to me that my body would feel sick. It wasn’t until we were on our way back from our honeymoon that the headache just wouldn’t go away.

After two weeks, I went to see my primary care physician, but not only did she tell me there was nothing wrong, she made me feel embarrassed that I had even come in to bother her in the first place. Unfortunately, I believed her and as my vision began to blur I just thought I needed to update my eye glasses prescription or replace the lightbulbs in my apartment. It never occurred to me that I could be going blind.

When I finally did find a doctor who would listen to me, she told me I had psuedotumor cerebri and I needed emergency surgery because I was going to be blind in three days. Somehow it still took the hospital two days to get me into the operating room. After my VP shunt was placed my vision continued to deteriorate for about three more weeks, but at that point there was nothing anyone could do anymore. Everything happened so fast I never even saw my own wedding photos.

Gratitude Is a Choice

Choosing gratitude really starts with not giving in to despair. Despair is defined as suffering minus meaning, but the thing about suffering is everybody has it. I will be blind for the rest of my life, but I’m not the only one in pain. The trick is finding the meaning in the suffering. It can’t be any meaning though. It has to be God’s meaning.

I was surrounded by horrific medical mistakes on all fronts, but that doesn’t mean my life is an accident. If I hadn’t lost my vision I don’t think I would have ever noticed John 9 in the way I do now.

In the story, Jesus heals a blind man on the Sabbath and religious mayhem ensues. It begins in verse one.

As He went along, He saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?”

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of Him who sent Me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light.”

I feel really privileged to have my burden mentioned specifically in the Bible. On one hand it’s really freeing because not only have I felt punished by my disability I’ve had someone say it, but on the other hand what Jesus is basically saying is it’s not about me.

Pain Into Purpose

I don’t know how the rest of you feel, but that’s really difficult for me to swallow because my pain sure seems to be about me. I’ve had to let go of dreams I’ve had since I was a child, I often feel like I’m holding my husband back, and as many tears as I cry about it I will never know what my kids look like. What purpose could this possibly serve?

But when I hear that passage, I’m reminded of someone else who asked that same question too. A man born blind 2000 years ago, left to beg in the street like a dog when his family abandoned him at a time when a disability might as well have been a death sentence. What purpose could this possibly serve? But it was for me and it was for you.

God allowed the eyes of that man to be closed so the eyes of my heart could be opened. So every time I find myself on a pedestal of self-pity and self-aggrandizement I can drag myself off, force myself back on my knees and say to God, “I choose to trust You. And I want You to use my pain for Your purpose.”

*** Chelsey’s story originally appeared here, as an interview for Lakes Church.

Meet Chelsey Painter Davis

Where to find her . . .

• Website
• The Blind Mom Life Podcast
• Book Now

Begin Within is a series to inspire a year-round lifestyle of gratitude that will impact not only your own life, but the lives of your neighbors as well. Gratitude is a theme we talk about often around here because it ties so closely into other missional living rhythms. Practicing gratitude reminds to keep our hearts soft and expectant and our eyes open. Therefore, the more we embrace gratitude, the easier it becomes to truly see our neighbors and where we can join what God is already doing in our neighborhoods.

If you would like to contribute to Begin Within, you can find the submission guidelines here.

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If you would like to cultivate rhythms in addition to gratitude that will empower you live on mission in your neighborhood, check out Cultivating a Missional Life: A 30-Day Devotional to Gently Help You Open Your Heart, Home, and Life to Your Neighbors. This small book will help you make a big impact in your neighborhood as you learn to let missional living flow from the inside out. Get the 30-day missional living challenge free when you purchase the book.