“But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.” (2 Corinthians 4:7, NIV)
I was raised in a Christian family, although we did not always attend the same church. My mother was Catholic and my brother and I went to mass with her on Sundays and attended catechism classes on Wednesdays. My paternal grandmother was Methodist, so when we visited her on weekends, she took us to Sunday School. My father hardly ever attended church unless there was a wedding or when my brother and I made our First Communion. I always felt there should be something more than the prayers I learned and recited from my little white missile. Through most of my early school years, I wanted more than the same rote prayers. I needed something to believe in.
In high school, I found some friends who were Baptist and I started attending Sunday evening services with them. The Baptist church was much different than the Catholic Church! I could just talk to God without an intercessor or a specific prayer. At an after-school Bible study, I accepted Jesus as my personal savior and desired to follow Him. My favorite verse at the time was I Corinthians 12:22, “ For as in Adam all died, so will all in Christ be made alive.” Christ had made me alive!
Like many of my high school friends, I thought God might call me to the mission field. I went on my first mission trip when I was fourteen, ministering to children on the beaches of New England with the Children’s Sand and Surf Mission. I liked teaching and I was good at it. I could become a missionary teacher! The mission field God ultimately called me to was not in another country, but was just as foreign.
After high school, I went to Millersville State Teachers College, preparing for where God would send me. I found myself walking into walls, tripping over sidewalks, and dealing with constant headaches. At Christmas break, I came home and drove my dad’s car into a telephone pole I just did not see. My concerned parents took me to Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia where we were told I had a rare and painful genetic disorder called keratoconus that was slowly destroying the corneas–the clear coverings–of my eyes. The corneas of the eyes should be curved, but mine were forming points and flaking away. Without proper treatment and eventual surgery, I could lose my vision.
I was nineteen then and books had always been important to me; the threat that I might become blind meant I would lose the ability to read and never be able to teach. I needed to leave Millersville and return home so I could be at Wills Eye Hospital every week while a series of hard contact lenses were inserted into my eyes to hold my corneas together.
The hard contacts were over-sized and painful to wear. They severely limited my vision, but they did seem to be helping my corneas to conform to a cylindrical shape. After a year, I was able to go back to college part-time at West Chester Unversity. My vision remained distorted, but I told myself that spiritual sight was more important than physical vision. I took heart from the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who said, “Seeing is not always believing.”
I still desperately wanted God to use me as a teacher , even if I needed to use a magnifying glass to read my books, even if I needed to learn Braille, even if it took longer for me to attain my degree.
I had no idea just how long that would be.
