No really. I am straight up blind. Like coke-bottle glasses blind.
And it’s really annoying.
I’ve spent most of my life in really ugly or really annoying or really “these don’t make me feel pretty” glasses, or wrestling with contacts.
But the last year or so I’ve been only wearing glasses because my contacts got super expensive [thanks astigmatism!]
And tonight I’ve been reading a book and I really wanted to just not see what was all going on around me anymore so I took off my glasses and held the words super close to me so I could read them.
Because sometimes I really, really just don’t want to see.
And as I was sitting curled up in a chair I realized something.
The reason I think I should never be a missionary is because sometimes I just don’t want to see. Sometimes I want to curl into myself and just disappear.
I’ll never forget the first time I got completely and utterly wasted. It wasn’t the first time I had drank by a long shot. I wasn’t 21. BUT I remember being stressed. I remember just wanting to have fun and NOT have to deal with whatever was going on in my life.
I didn’t want to see what was behind me. I didn’t want to see what was before me.
I’ll never forget the first supreme loss in my life. It was a boy I liked. I had known him for ten months. We had gotten close. And then one day, an instant message from his brother saying he had passed rocked my world.
And he was in and out of my life in about ten months.
I remember going to the funeral and I literally couldn’t sit still because I physically did not want to see his open casket.
And for a good while after that I didn’t want to see anymore. I didn’t want to look to God. I didn’t want to see the things He wanted to do in me.
I’ll never forget fighting rock bottom. Literally taking off my glasses as I walked home so I wouldn’t have to see. I didn’t want to see that God was physical next to me, wanting to hold me up.
I’m not a perfect Christian by a long shot. And I think that sometimes I get so angry because I feel like that is what people see in me. Like I’ve never screwed up, like I don’t cuss, gossip, read books I probably shouldn’t read.
But I am blind. I am completely and utterly blind to the things that God wants to do in me. Sometimes, I am blind to them simply because I am human.
Sometimes I am blind by choice.
And then I realize that God has given me these new eyes to see people around me.
And more importantly?
Sometimes, most of the time, about 85% of the time I choose to be blind, so that I cannot see what God sees in me.
And it’s in those moments; all of those selfish moments where I choose to be blind. Where I choose to turn away from the truth and the things that I see God wanting to do in me
because I am too scared.
And that blindness is what kept for so long from actually applying for the world race. I tried to avert my eyes, tried to take my glasses off, because there was no way that God wanted me to do THAT. There was not way He wanted to take the hot mess that I was on the inside and use me to share His love all around the world.
That blindness kept me from actually seeing that God was doing a great work in me. That He was doing a great work through me.
Everyday I have to put my glasses on to see. Everyday I struggle to keep them on. To not just shut off my sight. Some days are harder then others.
But it’s in that-it’s in the fact that I know that God gives me new eyesight daily that I am going to be a missionary.
. It’s because of all the reasons I shouldn’t be a missionary that I am going to be one.
I am blind sometimes, and that's ok.
But that isn't going to stop Jesus from allowing the world to see Himself in me.
