A Poet's Testimony (Part 2)

A Poet’s Testimony (Part 2)

I didn’t know it at the time, but when I awoke on that couch the next morning, some thirty plus years ago, my life would be forever changed. This was the absolute first time in my life that I had recognized an answer to prayer as doing something beyond my capability as a man to accomplish. God had done something beyond me that could not possibly be attributed to chance. I had prayed a prayer with a good heart to do what God would intend me to do and God had answered my prayer in a night. Skeptics might simply call this a self-fulfilling prophecy, nothing more than my subconscious causing something to happen that I sincerely wanted to happen, but they were not there. I was in a bad place and I was heading down a very dark road.

God had turned hatred to love and planted a seed of faith in a night. That morning I knew that there was nothing that God could not accomplish. The answer to my prayers was limited only by my faith and the Godly intent of my prayer. I set out on a mission to build my faith with God’s help and to be strong through affliction where He would talk to me the loudest. Faith was daily in my prayers.

A few weeks later, my then girlfriend, now wife of thirty years, told me that she had glaucoma and that she had an appointment to see her doctor. She was worried about the outcome because her eyes had been under pressure and she was having headaches. I secretly read-up on glaucoma and discovered that people with glaucoma often times go blind. I will not lie to you; my initial thoughts were selfish thoughts of how my life would be impacted by her blindness, but I quickly snapped out of it and remembered my vow to be strong in affliction. Allowing myself one McDonald’s chocolate milkshake a day, I fasted for breakfast and lunch for three days and prayed for a positive outcome from the eye doctor that week.

When I picked-up my future wife at the eye doctor, she was quiet and somber. She gazed out the front windshield of my truck and didn’t say much of anything. After a few minutes when I couldn’t take it any longer, I asked her how it had gone at the eye doctor. Her response was precious; she said, “Oh, everything is fine, just like always. My pressure has not changed much and my headaches are probably due to all the pollen this summer.” I had been hoodwinked; her eye pressure had been relatively the same since she was first diagnosed and began treatment; but I assumed the worst and never asked. I wasn’t sure if it was the devil or God Himself playing tricks on me. In the end, all I could do was laugh at my own stupidity and acknowledge that although probably not necessary, my prayers had been answered.

I continued on my faith building quest. Today, my faith is unshakable, but still not a mustard seed. I still struggle to find a worldly answer to what can be accomplished by God with man’s faith. He has no worldly bounds that I can define as a man and His love pours forth like a never-ending mountain spring.