Part Two: Still Seeking

Dictated to a friend on Monday, June 22, 2015:

My sophomore year at CCU, there were three blind girls on campus. Thinking back, I can see myself in a little of each of them. The one I feel had a little vision, like I can still read (somewhat) on the marker board. In chapel, I could see her put her eyes right up to her watch and strain them as if looking at the time. She also had a guide dog, but I never got to meet her. There was another girl, who had long red curly hair; her eyes were closed, but I remember talking to her a little bit as she came to street church a few times. She used a cane but she also touched around a lot with her hand and depended on her friends’ arms. But it was Heather who I remember the most. I don’t exactly remember how I first met Heather: I think it was just on the sidewalk going to class. At the beginning of the semester she used a walking cane and her eyes were also shut. But by the end of the semester, she was wearing big sunglasses and using an automatic wheelchair to get herself around. Heather lived on the bottom of my dorm, so I saw her quite often. And I’m not exactly sure what other health issues she had, but by the end of that year, she was gone.

At the beginning of last weekend, my roommate from college came for a visit. When Calli first came to visit me for my birthday in March, it was right at the time that the first of my independency just to get to the bathroom had first started. My left eye had just barely started to go down, and as we talked on the couch one evening she asked if I was scared to go blind. At that point in time the thought was just so unfathomable, that yes, I was scared, and told her so. I would have never dreamed that hardly three months later I actually would be at this point where blindness was a reality. As Calli came back to visit last weekend, she asked me this time if I was ready to see Jesus. And just the week before, my longings to be free of my sufferings had been so great, I told her yes! But the more that we got to talking, the more I’ve maybe realized that I’ve been viewing it all wrong.

You see, I woke up the next morning after that talk with several songs and scripture in mind, and one was Delirious worship song where he says, “Lord you have my heart and I will search for yours.” All of a sudden, I almost panicked because I didn’t feel like I was ready. The thought had never really occurred to me in that way before, to seek for the heart of Jesus. But then my attitude, as much as my longing still to be free was still there, took a turn. I really asked God, “How do I search for your heart when I can’t read my Bible anymore?” The thing that made me think, too, maybe it was before Calli had been here and Heather had been on my mind, is that Heather recognized me even though she couldn’t see me. I could never sneak past her on the sidewalk without her saying ”hi” to me first. It probably was more so how my ankle came down on the ground, made a funny noise, but still, she recognized me. I thought about this and really wondered how I would recognize the heart of God.

It’s been over a year since I’ve read the books, but in CS Lewis’ books, The Chronicles of Narnia, Lucy asks Aslan on several occasions why he didn’t come sooner to their rescue or how she would recognize him at the time she had to leave Narnia for the last time. Aslan tells her that things never happen the same way twice and by knowing him in Narnia she would get to know him in her own world. Sometimes I feel like I do the same to God, and I know that He never does things the same way twice, and with every time something new happens I get to know Him in a deeper way. I think the blindness has become a way for me to really cry out to God because when I have no one else I just simply talk to Him. But still, searching for the heart of God is just something that I cannot fathom for the moment. But I am praying that as I continue to seek, then I will recognize His heart and continue to follow it until He says that I am ready to see past the white veil.

“Who You Are” by Nichole Nordeman

I was certain that I knew you at the tender age of twelve

You’d so often been described by those who said they knew you well

Dark and rugged in your thirties with a smile as bright as your robe

Every teacher, every preacher with the very best intent

Found new ways to hide the mystery replaced by common sense

And to know you was to keep you in my pocket so easy to hold

I know I can’t explain you, I would not even try to

And yet it’s clear that you are here beside me

I marvel and I wonder so near and somehow still so far

What makes you who you are? Who you are?

It is easy to insist on what is packaged and precise

And dismiss the clear suspicion that you’re bigger than we’d like

It is tempting to regard you as familiar in so many ways

I know I can’t explain you, I would not even try to

And still it’s clear that you are here beside me

I marvel and I wonder so near and somehow still so far

What makes you who you are?

I’ve tried to draw these lines around you

A definition or an absolute

But I could not be satisfied with black or white

There is so much more there is so much you

I know I can’t explain you, I would not even try to

And still it’s clear that you are here beside me

I marvel and I wonder so near and somehow still so far

What makes you who you are?

I marvel and I wonder so near and somehow still so far

What makes you who you are?

It’s a mystery

It’s a mystery