View can be quite expensive

As I get older, and my goal is to get as old as I can, I start to notice some of the things that I haven’t noticed in my life. You know how it is; things creep in little by little, and then all of a sudden, there it is.

That happened to me recently with my eyes. Since I was in ninth grade (I won’t say the year), I have been wearing glasses and have gotten used to wearing them. Every year I upgraded them, and the upgrade was bit by bit until if I took my glasses off, I couldn’t see myself.

The advantage of that is that I don’t wear my glasses when I look in the bathroom mirror. That saves me a lot of trouble. What am I going to do that I can really see?

About two years ago, when I was at the ophthalmologist, he noticed some things in my eyes.

“You have cataracts in both eyes.”

He took me by surprise and I knew what he was talking about, but I answered despite that.

“No, doctor,” I said quite seriously, “I don’t have a Cadillac, much less two, but I do have a Chevrolet. I’m very happy with my Chevrolet, thank you.”

The doctor looked at me as if he were looking at a madman. Then he said something that confused me a bit. “Do you think I’m a psychologist?”

Looking me straight in the eye, he said, “You have cataracts on your eyes.”

“Well,” I said, looking at him, “I had my eye on several Cadillacs, the one I liked was a bright blue one. The only problem with that Cadillac was that I couldn’t afford it. But I gotta tell you, I’m still eyeing that Cadillac.” .

“Look at me,” the doctor said rather sternly, “I’m not talking about Cadillacs; I’m talking about cataracts in your eyes. You’ll need surgery to remove those cataracts.”

I must say I felt a bit embarrassed. I don’t know if the doctor was lisping or I was listening with a lisp, I thought he said Cadillac, which confused me.

He then explained to me what this cataract thing was all about and how I should go to get it removed and replaced.

That was almost two years ago, and due to the pandemic, pretty much everything closed.

Then recently things started to open up and I was able to go to the eye clinic and get ready for surgery. As they explained to me, it would take approximately six weeks to do it, although the surgery itself would take about 15 minutes. They had to do one eye and then two weeks later do the other eye. There were two weeks of preparation before and two weeks after to complete the process.

The eye clinic was across town and I couldn’t drive my car when I went to visit them. From then on, my chauffeur for those appointments was the Graceful Mistress of the parish house.

Then the day of the actual surgery came, I was chauffeured to the eye clinic and walked in for prep. I’m not sure why so much paperwork is needed these days, but I signed paper after paper after paper. It got to the point where I almost forgot what my name was.

Then I went in and the nurse took me to get ready for the doctor’s surgery. The nurse spent about an hour and a half with me while the doctor only spent 15 minutes.

There comes a time when I’ve had enough. You go through the whole routine of checking blood pressure and drawing blood from my body. I know it’s all necessary, but it sure can be monotonous.

She was finishing all the prep work and was ready to greet me so the doctor could do my cataract surgery.

At that time, I said very seriously, “Could you change your mind?”

She looked at me and sighed deeply, and I could see that she was not a happy camper. But she said very calmly, “Yes, you can change your mind if you really want to.”

“Great,” I gurgled, “can I have your mind?”

Staring at me, he gave me an idea of ​​what he was thinking. I did not see that coming.

The operation went well and I was surprised. I’ve been wearing glasses for a long time, and now, with my left eye, I could see almost perfectly, whatever it was. He couldn’t see up close and the doctor said he would probably need reading glasses. But he had never seen the world as bright as that day.

The darkness seems to sneak up on a person without that person knowing. That happened to me. Nothing is better than seeing the light shine.

As my wife drove me home, a scripture verse occurred to me. “The Lord is my light and my salvation, who will I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life, who will I fear?” (Psalm 27:1).

Sometimes I get discouraged by the darkness around me and I don’t realize how dark it is. But when I look at the Lord Jesus Christ in the Bible, I see that wonderful light that illuminates the world.