My eyesight is not real good. Even with glasses, it’s not corrected to 20/20. I’m near-sighted. I have an astigmatism. I have no depth perception. To make matters worse, I grew up with double vision. Of course, I didn’t know that wasn’t normal. So I didn’t ask about it until I was almost an adult. At age 17, I asked my mother about it.
“Mom, is it normal to see two of everything?”
“What do you mean, Marjie?”
“Well, you have two eyes. You see one out of your right and one out of your left. So you see two. Right?”
“Oh, Marjie.” My mother laughed and walked away. Therefore, I concluded that it was normal and I never inquired about it again. I didn’t know that the brain melded the two images into one. As a result, throughout my entire education, from kindergarten to Long Beach State University, I struggled with double vision. I also got my driver’s license during that time and I enlisted in the United States Air Force. (It’s scary to think I learned to drive a car with double vision. But I’d lived with it my whole life and I’d learned to compensate for it incredibly well.)
Once I’d completed Basic Training, the Air Force ran me through an eye exam. The eye doctor was a captain who felt that he was important due to his rank and he had little tolerance for a no-rank. He said to me, “Do you see that dot on the wall?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You keep your eye on that dot. Do not, under any circumstances, take your eye off that dot. Do you understand me?”
Needless to say, the first thing I did was take my eye off the dot because the instant he moved the card covering my eye, the dot moved, so I shifted my eyes to keep them on that dot.
“What did I tell you?” he yelled.
“To keep my eye on the dot. Can I help it if the dot moves when you move the card?” There was a sudden change in his attitude. “The dot moved?” He left the room and returned a couple of minutes later with three other doctors.
I suspect that this doctor was as new to military service as I, even though he was an officer. He was rude and disrespectful, but God used his condescending attitude to detect a physical problem that no other eye doctor had ever caught. They’d always told me, “Keep your eye on the dot.” But I knew they meant, “Keep your eyes still.” So I did.
The Air Force doctor treated me like I was stupid, but because of it, I kept my eye on that dot, regardless of where it moved. And as a result, my double vision was caught and corrected right after I went into the Air Force.
Isn’t God good? No civilian eye doctor would ever have talked to a patient like that. But that’s what I needed in order to keep my eye on the dot. And if I hadn’t kept my eye on the dot, I might still be battling double vision – 35 years later.