I returned home from Tibet exhausted. The trip was more demanding than I expected that it would be and although there was a pile of work waiting for me in the office, I took one appointment and then excused myself, went home and collapsed in bed. The next three or four days were a blur of sleep and diarrhea, as my body purged itself of three weeks of very unfamiliar food, high altitude and unrelenting stress. Usually I bounce back pretty well, but this time I felt it.
Things started returning to normal the following week and I slipped into the normal routine of being dad to my kids, principal to a few dozen more and spiritual leader for our community here in Tokyo, Japan. However, I noticed something peculiar as I drove my son to the train station to commute to school. I couldn’t make out the license plate of the car in front of me. I had had a new prescription made only three months before when I got back from holding OperationSAFE camps in Haiti and so it seemed odd. That evening as I went to pick him up again, I noticed that something was definitely wrong. Usually, I would see the street signs in the distance, watch them gradually come into focus as they grew nearer and then pass by – but that night they never came into focus! They stayed blurry until they shot by without me having the slightest idea what was written on them.
The next day I went to an optometrist. One of the most difficult things about living in a foreign country where the language is so completely different than my own, is that in certain areas my vocabulary is hopeless. Medicine is one of the those areas. The doctor checked my eyes, took a picture of my retina and explained that there was a problem. She wrote down on a scrap of paper the following characters -
???????? – actually she had about 5 more added onto it and I could only make out three or four. My wife, who is Japanese, had almost as difficult a time with it. The doctor said that if the condition worsened she would recommend surgery.
Of course, as soon as I got home I rushed to the internet to try and figure out what the mysterious problem could be and the first things that popped up all looked terrible, irreversible damage, macular degeneration, even the possibility of blindness. With a history of diabetes in my family I even took the step of getting a full physical examination which mercifully found nothing wrong. The doctor had told me to come back in a week and they would check to see if the condition had worsened, so we waited and prayed!
The next week, I walked into the doctor’s office once again and a different doctor was on duty. He checked my eyes, dismissed the previous doctor’s findings as artifacts on the instrument’s lens and made out a new prescription for a much stronger pair of glasses. I didn’t know what to think. If God had healed me, then why couldn’t I see? If there was nothing there in the first place, then why couldn’t I see? We decided to take the whole thing as a wake-up call to slow down and reduce the amount of stress I was under. I cancelled an upcoming trip to Hong Kong, stopped taking speaking engagements and started clearing my calendar as much as possible.
Four months later, while on a trip the U.S., a generous supporter made an appointment for me to see a specialist. She thoroughly examined my eyes and not only was there nothing wrong, but she said that my new glasses were now too strong! When I returned to Japan I dug my old glasses out of the drawer and with a prayer, put them on. Sure enough, I could see! I could read the small print on the calendar across the room. See the clock on the back of the wall. See the license plate of the car in front of me and read those signs at night as they rush by.
To all of you who have been concerned and praying for me. Thank you!
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