Seeing but Blind

I went for my yearly contact lens eye exam and they insisted I needed to have my pupils dilated so they could check out my retinas. They told me the dilation drug effect would last 4 hours. It is the next morning,14 hours later, and they remain a little dilated. I do everything to excess. So I am still only guessing at what I am writing. I can't see it very well.

But I see a whole lot better than yesterday. They gave me the little roll up sunglasses to make it through the mall and to my car where my regular sunglasses were.
"I won't need these to get to the car, will I?" I asked.
They looked knowingly at each other and said I would be the judge of that.
I left the store and turned into the blinding lights of the mall. Like a vampire, I shielded my face and cried out in horror, "Who turned up the lights!?" Snatching the insta-geek glasses, I put them on, praising God that Asherel was not here to have her entire childhood memory crystallized in that moment of utter mortification as her mother slunk through the mall, hand over eyes, wearing roll up sunglasses. While I could not clearly see the people pointing and laughing, I could feel the derision of the ones I bumped into.

I stumbled into the car, and groped wildly for my real sunglasses, and then found a second pair to put on top of those. The sun was a bitter enemy. I put down the visor, and wondered how on earth I could open my eyes long enough in this light to drive the 2 miles home. And then, I was stuck behind a car with a window in the back which reflected the sun like a laser.

"AGGGHHHHHHH!" I cried as we came to a stoplight. The sun reflecting off the window was directly beamed into my eyes, and then was boring a hole out the back off my skull. After interminable hours, the light changed and I drove, eyes averted, safely (sort of) home.

Upon tumbling inside, to the usually dark interior of my home, I kept the sunglasses on. Asherel glanced up, with a perplexed look as I staggered to the couch.

"Did you notice the hibiscus?" she asked.
"What is a hibiscus?"
"The flower," she said.
"What flower?"
She pointed, or I suspect the blurry movement I saw was pointing, at the tree we bought three years ago that stands in the corner of the sunroom.
"That tree flowers!" I cried. I squinted and could see vague deep pinks and salmon petals of a huge bloom, a single glorious flower on the tree I curse every week as I realize I forgot to water it again and its wilting leaves accuse me.
"It blooms every year," said Asherel.
"It does?"
"Yes, and it stays for about a week."
So one week a year, this beautiful flower I don't remember ever being there comes, and I am blind and unable to see it, let alone draw it.
"Take a picture," advised Asherel.
"No, I will draw it."
Determined, I pinched the screen on the IPod to 2,000% magnification and atom by laborious atom drew the Hibiscus flower that I almost missed.
"How long has it been here?" I asked, sure it must have bloomed while I was gone.
"Since yesterday," answered the ever observant Asherel.

How had I walked through the sunroom, where I spend 85% of my day, and not seen that huge flower, even before my eyes were dilated and all life was a blur? This most magnificent of flowers was unfurling its beauty despite my years of neglect caring for the tree, blessing me with its presence and I had looked several times right at it, and not seen it. Not only that, but apparently, it had come 3 other times, and I had either missed it completely, or totally forgotten its magnificence, a miracle of color and form.

Even the feeblest of troglodytes probably gets the symbolism on this one. How many examples of blessing and beauty does God have to reveal of Himself and I still stumble blindly, not seeing the One that holds the whole world in front of my longing, blinded eyes?

Isaiah 29: 18-19

¹⁸ In that day the deaf will hear the words of the scroll,
and out of gloom and darkness
the eyes of the blind will see.

¹⁹ Once more the humble will rejoice in the LORD;
the needy will rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.