"I can't think without my glasses." ~Vivienne Westwood

I was six years old when I got my first pair.  It was first grade, and I couldn't see the chalk board from my seat in Mrs. Coats' classroom, and that's how we knew.  My mother took me to Dr. Stoltzer, where I was diagnosed with "progressive myopia."  Because of the "progressive" part of that, my vision worsened quickly - for several years I had to get a stronger prescription every six months.  It finally leveled out, and for the past 20 years, my prescription has changed very little.

I wear contacts most of the time, but would be lost without my glasses.  My glasses are the last thing I take off at night after I get into bed, and the first thing I grab each morning as I rise.  My distance vision is extremely poor, and there is no way I could function without something - contacts and glasses - to help.  In the past year, my near vision has begun to decline as well, forcing me into reading glasses.  While I might complain from time to time about all of the inconvenience of relying on vision correction, I am thankful for the aid it provides.

The first eyeglasses were made in Italy in 1286.  So I wonder, what did people who lived before then do?  I thought about all of this yesterday, when my left earpiece on my glasses broke, and I also realized I'm down to my last pair of contacts.  The thought of being myopic without the ability to correct it is troubling to me!

But have you ever looked up "myopia" in a dictionary?  While the first definition relates to the eye, it is also defined as "lack of foresight or discernment; narrow-mindedness; intolerance."  With my eye condition of myopia, only those things very close to me are discernible; everything at a distance is a blur.  And I'm thankful this can be corrected easily.  But I need to examine my heart, and make sure that I don't have myopia there.  Is that as troubling to me as the thought of physical myopia?  It should be more so!

In our young ladies' Bible class, we've been talking about this very thing - hypocrisy.  That's what it really is to have heart myopia.  Proverbs 4:23 says, "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it."

I am thankful for my contact lenses, and my glasses (and my Mr. Fix-it Husband who can repair them when they break), so that I don't have to go through my days physically myopic.  But I'm much more thankful for my Heavenly Father, who loves me enough to give me His Word to help guide my heart in a way that I don't have to be spiritually myopic.

So from now on as I reach for my glasses each morning, thankful for the clear vision they provide, I hope that simple act will remind me to live a genuine life that day, filled with God's wisdom, free from pretense and intolerance - free from heart myopia.

First pair of glasses - first grade