Fasting My Vision Ch. 1: The Day I Decided Not to See

I’ve had glasses since I was in the second grade. It’s just become a part of me, something I don’t even think twice about anymore. My teammates laugh at the year’s supply of contacts I brought on the Race, but for me it was no different than packing up a year’s worth of prescriptions. I needed them – or so I thought.

One night, as my team was sitting around talking and praying, I heard the Holy Spirit whisper, “Why don’t you ask for your eyes to be healed?”

Huh. I had never really thought about God healing my eyes. I never thought my vision was that important or that He really wanted to. But even still, my first reaction was, “Yeah, Jesus healed the blind in the Bible. Why not me, too?”

So that night, we prayed over my eyes. We prayed for restored sight and spiritual sight. That I would see what no eye has seen. I felt my spirit come into alignment, agreeing that God could and would heal my eyes. I felt like I needed to take out my contacts when we finished, but didn’t immediately notice a difference.

As I was praying about it that night, I could feel that I wasn’t supposed to put on my glasses or contacts the next day. A full day of trusting that God would provide a way for me to see the world He’s sent me out into.

Apparently, Satan didn’t like this idea very much, because I was very rudely awoken at 4:00 AM to the sound of all of my contacts falling on the floor. No one had touched the bag they were in or the table it was sitting on. And before you go thinking I’m crazy and that there’s no way Satan could have knocked my contacts over, this wasn’t the first spiritual attack we (or the other teams that had stayed in San Jose) had experienced in this house. Some people might chalk it up to ghosts, a haunted house, or just a coincidence, but I don’t believe in coincidences in the Kingdom. Satan & his demons were ANGRY. Which honestly just gave me even more reason to trust God’s promise.

The next day, I ended up having to go shopping not once, but twice with my teammates in preparation for the debrief we were about to go to. The first time was with Ari, our Squad Leader, and it was truly an experience. I’m talking mistaking meat seasoning for raisins (yes, my vision really is that bad). She even had to swipe my card for me at the checkout because I genuinely couldn’t find it myself. And then of course, it started raining on our way home. POURING rain. It really felt like everything that could go wrong did on the day I decided not to see.

That night, my teammates and I went back out to shop for snacks for our weeklong debrief in the mountains. Since my vision gets even worse at night, I had 2 girls that were directing my steps, telling me when the sidewalk sloped or there was a hole. At the store, I felt like a little child trying to keep up with her parents, because I knew if I wandered off on my own, it would be incredibly difficult to find them again. As we wandered, I constantly had to keep asking what was in each aisle and where to find specific items. 

I’m happy to at least report that we all got a good laugh over my predicament at dinner. Most of the conversation was centered around different situations where I had to ask for help and my teammates’ thoughts went from “why can’t you do it yourself?” To “oh right, you can’t see!” (Like, when I asked what was in the glass bowl in the middle of the table… it was chips.)

The following morning, I woke up ready to get packed and head to debrief. As I sat in bed, I asked, “Okay God, can I put my contacts in today?”

You can imagine my shoulders slumping as I heard him reply, “You already know the answer to that.”

I really had to hope and pray that I packed everything I needed as we loaded up the van. As a logistics leader, debrief is the big event that I help to plan for my squad. I and, thankfully, 2 other people serve as the coordinators, treasurers, and points of contact for the week. And here I was, about to walk into it half-blind.

Want to know how debrief went? Click here for Ch. 2, Literally Walking by Faith.