Gratitude

This story is from my book Rise, With Healing In Our Wings. The book is available on the 'net from Barnes & Noble, Amazon,* and other book-selling sites. It can also be ordered at many bookstores and checked out at many public libraries. *Backordered.

It was as if a butterfly's wing had brushed my eye. I thought nothing of it and continued to withdraw groceries from a paper sack on the kitchen table. Grocery shopping on Friday evenings at Storehouse Market in Provo was a family ritual in the 1970s. Storehouse didn't have shopping carts; rather, they had warehouse-style platform dollies with inverted U-shaped handles.The store's appeal was its low prices. Customers marked the price of items with a grease pencil and did their own bagging.

Two days later, my eye was sore and swollen. What had been white was turning blood red. My wife insisted I visit an eye doctor "immediately." The doctor peered into his "periscope" and gasped, "You're going to lose your eye!" That exclamation, delineated by the desperation in his voice, caused me to faint. (His chairside manner was merciless.)

When I revived, he explained that I had cut more than halfway through my cornea, and infection was raging. "I doubt I can save your eye," he said, adding "How did this happen?" I told him that in looking down to take groceries out of a paper sack, I had apparently cut my cornea on the sack's top edge.

Although he lacked tact, he was a superb eye doctor. He called the pharmacy at a nearby hospital and ordered two ultra-strong, custom-formulated antibiotics in the form of eye drops. "You must put these into your eye every half hour, alternating between the two. You're going to think it's battery acid, but it's our only chance to save your eye.

He was right about the battery acid. My hand trembled each time I held the dropper above my eye. But I managed it--for three days. He monitored me each day, and even came to my house. Progress was slow, but eventually the infection was eliminated.

That experience was about more than my eye. It was about the truth that when the need for divine help isn't urgent, we tend to pray without passion--lazily, lamely, laconically. That had been my practice. It changed, however, during the siege to save my eye. I tearfully petitioned the Lord on my knees when I wasn't on my back infusing eye drops. I came to realize that it's an insult, in good times and bad, to approach the Lord half-heartedly, reciting requests by rote and offering thanks by afterthought. Indeed, when our lives are going well, we may stand guilty of praying ungratefully, of taking for granted unnumbered and unabated blessings.

Some grocery store baggers no doubt wonder why I get a far-away look in my eyes when they ask, "Paper or plastic?"

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