So by now, some of you may know that Abigail, my 6 year old daughter with the eye condition, is being fitted for and receiving an ocular prosthesis called a scleral shell tomorrow. This is all happening first thing in the morning. We have to be at the surgery center at 6:30am. Whew! The procedure starts with her going under anesthesia so they can make a mold of the eye. Then we will go and see the ocularist as she works on making Abigail a prosthetic shell to go over her little eye. If all goes well tomorrow, we will actually come home tomorrow night with her scleral shell in her eye. Pretty big and exciting deal. It's amazing how God has given doctors this knowledge about the human body. Truly amazing!
As I was praying and pondering today in my office something very strange happened to me. I got worked up over doing this procedure for her. I love my Abigail just the way she is. In fact, I love her so much the way she is, little eyeball and all, that I think I'd just like to keep her that way sometimes. It makes her special...different. I'm reminded however that this is a medical necessity for her. This will help her eyelid to open up all the way and will help fill the eye socket so the orbital bones don't atrophy. She's going to look and feel pretty normal after this as both eyes will look a lot alike.
Till the doctor sprung on us this summer that we needed to do this now, we hadn't planned on doing this till she asked for this someday. That was when we understood it to be more cosmetic. I've never known it to bother her before, except for the occasional idiot in line at the grocery store that wants to ask us right in front of her, "What's wrong with her eye?" But through this process and getting ready for it, I've been made aware from Abigail that it does bother her some. She gets tired of the questions and looks. You will just never see her react to it.
Our early childhood director relayed a story to me that happened on a Wednesday night at church a couple of weeks ago. She was teaching Abi's group and a little girl in the class, who's known Abi for more than a year, began a grand inquisition into what was "wrong" with Abi's eye and kept getting in her face to look at it. It was a little pestering. Then, the teacher said that Abigail replied rather matter of fact, "That's the way God made me."
That's right, Abigail. Don't ever forget that. That's the way God made you. There was no quiver in the Creator's hand as He formed you in your mother's womb. As I've seen you grow up from day one I've seen your smaller eye, and it's quite wonderful if you ask this daddy. There are many reasons that God gave you this special eye, and one of them might just be the journey of faith that He needed to take your parents on to draw us into total dependency on Him for ALL things.
I know that this will help her in many ways as we journey forward in life. I'm excited about those prospects. But I pray that Abigail will always know in her heart that God made her on purpose with supernatural intentions, even if some people may see her eye as flawed. Aren't we all flawed physically in some way? I think that's the way God likes us. Maybe if we could just see a glimpse of each other with His eyes.
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