If you’ve kept up with my blogs along the way, it’s no secret that God has used blindness to speak clear truths to me over the course of the past year. I wrote about the little boy in India who rocked my faith (When Healing Doesn’t Happen) and the little boy in Cambodia who helped revive it.
What I didn’t write was my own journey; my own blindness.
Before launching last July I made several rounds and saw several doctors to make sure I was physically prepared to leave. I expected several prescriptions, a few tests, a years’ worth of probiotics and vitamins. But as I sat in the optometrist’ chair I couldn’t believe my ears as he told me the most unexpected news:
they had found something growing on my optic nerve and they wanted to monitor the growth over the course of the year.
Surely, I thought, God would not send me out to strike me blind! But as I stepped wholeheartedly into life on the race, I realized that meant stepping wholeheartedly into closeness with disability and disease of all kinds: especially blindness, both physical and spiritual.
As I laid my hands on blind eyes and aching knees and swollen tummies and asked God for healing, I held my breath and wondered if he would remember to heal me, too.
When I started asking the Lord about life after the race, he brought new depth to the ache in my heart as he opened my eyes to see the pain his heart endured (The Drive-By , Kai).
As I studied and prayed and lived life with the Spirit of God, one word kept coming to mind and drifting into conversation:
GENERATION.
I saw generation after generation of sin and my heart cried out to see the generation of those who love God and keep his commands (Exodus 20:6). I read the promises God made to Abraham, generations and land, and I marveled at his faith when the first piece of land he acquired was a field to bury his family in the very center (Genesis 23-24). I held small, giggling children in my arms and celebrated their adoption into our hosts’ family. Conversations with people at home, conversations with random people on the street—all seemed to land on this topic.
But I did not understand.
I kept asking the Lord questions about life after the race and he kept answering:
generation.
Well, with the last few months of the race wrapping up, Parent Vision Trip, Final Debrief, and oh-so-many emotions that tagged along, I had neither time nor energy to discern whatever he meant by it.
When I landed in America my heart was wrapped in the familiar, suffocating grip of fear. Insecurity, shame, fierce independence; all tangled themselves tightly around my hope. I read Psalm after Psalm and story after story of men who stood, terrified, against enemies and armies. Faith finds us there on the frontlines, shaking in our boots and desperate to depend on something greater than ourselves.
I was desperate to live in the same victory of Joshua at Jericho, David against Goliath, and Jesus over death.
So, when my body didn’t readjust to America well and I felt tired and weak, I called out to Jesus, laced up my tennis shoes and ran as far as I could.
When I ran my fingers through my hair and felt bald patches from sickness and dehydration, I called out to Jesus and cut it all off.
When I encountered my own weakness I asked God for an encounter with his strength, and when I encountered my own ugliness I asked God for an encounter with his beauty.
And he was faithful.
He always is.
Faith and work met in my reality, and together, God and I faced the fears I didn’t know I had. Holy Spirit did exactly what he was sent to do and gave clear conviction of sin, righteousness, and judgement to come (John 16:4-15).
But contentment was far from me.
With “generation” still tumbling aimlessly through my thoughts and the possibility of blindness safely ignored, I skipped my appointment with the optometrist and drove down to Gainesville, GA for Project Searchlight. I sang a lot and cried a lot (which is pretty typical behavior for a girl like me), and I begged the Lord for vision. Although we were facing fears together, I still wasn’t really doing anything. I felt useless and frustrated and hopelessly dependent on my parents and family; another deeply rooted fear.
I woke up on the second day with pain behind my left eye. As the days passed the pain got worse, and my prayers got louder.
As I walked into the worship session Thursday morning, the words of the song hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest:
“I once was blind but now I see.”
And I sobbed.
The ache in my eyes and the ache in my heart were too big, too scary, and too much.
My sister, Laura, came over and placed her hands on my eyes. With as much faith and confidence as though Jesus were standing right there with us, she humbled herself and asked him to take away the pain; both kinds. She asked for healing and vision and peace, overwhelming peace.
I reached up and pulled the contact lenses from my red eyes. The speaker took the stage and began, “Okay, let’s open up to John chapter 9 and take a look at the parable of the vineyard.”Desperate for some truth, I squinted my eyes and opened my bible.
But the parable of the vineyard is not in John chapter 9. I wept again as I scanned the page and saw the bold heading above verse 1:
“JESUS HEALS A MAN BORN BLIND.”
We all know this story. The disciples ask Jesus who sinned to cause this man’s blindness, and Jesus replies instead by saying, “It is not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”
Could it be true? Could it be that my blindness, my lack of vision and clarity about the future were not the result of my own sin?
And there it was, open and exposed, another fear: that my sin could somehow pull me too far from grace to be found; that the God I’d come to love more than life itself would leave.
As I reveled in the nearness of God’s saving grace, and released all the tension around the future I feared I had ruined, another man took the stage and announced a video. I looked but couldn’t make out anything happening on the screen in front of me, so I sat back and listened. At the end of the video, the narrator made a statement that sent chills of memory down my spine.
“Is there a generation out there that is actually capable of becoming something like Christ? We call it the 42nd Generation.”
And so it began—the story I’ve been trying to tell you, about how the Lord asked me to sell my car, cancel my phone plan, and quit my job.
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Now read Part 2, And So It Began by clicking here.
OR
To donate to 42nd Generation, click here and type “Amy Williams” into the [Appealed By:] box under G42 Ministry or Missionary.
