Last week, I spent the early hours of my Saturday morning in the ER with what was diagnosed as a corneal abrasion. Friday morning, my daughter poked and scratched my eye. It hurt but was mostly fine throughout the day. As the night went on though, it started to get worse. I tried going to sleep to rest it, but when I woke up in the middle of the night, it was swollen and red. I thought maybe I actually had something in my eye… so off to the ER I went.

You should know, I HATE anything around my eyes. Even just watching things on TV that has to do with the eyes just creeps me out. Now, here I was with drops going in, numbing and pressure, and things touching my eye. The doctor was patient with me, said I had the scratch, and prescribed me antibiotic drops due to the swelling indicating it may be infected.

They gave me a printout about corneal abrasions, and I noticed that one of the things listed that can cause these is dust. Literally, a speck. The tiniest of things can cause a HUGE amount of pain, difficulty seeing, infection, and leave you feeling like something more than just a speck or scratch is in your eye.

It felt like glass in my eye most of the time, and light made it even worse. Going out into the sun made me cower, squint, and lose vision. Sunday morning, I put on my darkest shades and headed to church. On the ride over, I was trying to think of a lesson in all this. I believe everything has a reason or a lesson to be learned. The verse in Matthew was the first thing that came to my mind.

^‘3And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? ⁴ Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? ⁵ Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.’ Matthew 7:3-5 New King James Version (NKJV)

This led me to think about two different aspects of my situation.

1. The problem: the ‘speck in our eyes’/ the sin in our life:

Sometimes, the ‘tiniest’ of sins, if you will, can cause us big pain, make us have trouble seeing things clearly, lead us to more sin, and leave us feeling worse. When we step into the light of God’s holiness, it will expose our sins and even might take us aback. When we get closer to that light though, we realize the pain the sin is causing us and hopefully we seek help and allow that to lead us to repentance.

2. The solution: the right care.

Certainly, as the verse suggests, if someone is going to examine my eyes for the tiniest of things, they MUST have clear vision and NOT have something, especially something even larger than my issue, obstructing their sight. When someone is dealing with ‘small sins’, the last thing they need is someone dealing with the same sin or larger variation of it telling them how to overcome the sin. This doesn’t mean they can’t have any sin, we are called to help one another, but if it’s similar in nature and they haven’t yet overcome it, someone else that has clear sight in this area would be the appropriate person. They also need gentle care and not someone flashing the brightest light into their eyes just to show them it’s there. Sometimes, too much light exposure can hurt more than it helps. That blinding effect can cause them to run further into the dark. We must allow God’s light to shine on its own through our love for the person without us forcing it.

So after learning such a lesson, I went back for my follow up exam, and it turns out some of the scratch was raised and has gotten infected. Not the news I wanted, but perhaps there’s another lesson to be learned here on how some take longer to heal than others. We have to keep up with the treatment and allow ourselves and others the time they need to get back on track. Either way, I’m not exactly thrilled of having to use ointment on my eye and the idea of possible scarring, but I’ll get through it. Pray for me guys… and if you have kids, clip them nails and get those sharp edges!