thank you Lord for eyes to see

close your eyes for 10 seconds.

pretty dark in there? well, imagine that being a lifetime. this week, i had the opportunity to work with a blind girl. & she impacted me more than she will ever know. i work with kids on monday nights at the church that i attend. usually we only have toddlers but this monday night, we had four older kids show up all at the same time, one of them being this blind girl that i mentioned. at first, i was the only worker there & i was freaking out a little. but i did my best. the other kids went into the children's area & were playing kickball & across the hall was the nursery, where this blind girl wanted to stay because she was afraid of getting hit by a ball. she was also reading. she brought a book about women in history that was in braille. i was intrigued right off the bat. she sat on the floor & opened the book & began to run her fingers across the bottom to find the page number. she found her page & with both hands, took both index fingers & ran them across those raised bumps. i just watched her. she would read something funny & then laugh but keep her fingers going right across the page. i found myself staring.

next, she pulled toys out of the bin & asked me what they looked like & what colors they were. then she asked me what blue or red or purple looked like. how do you explain colors to someone who has never seen them? how do you tell them what red is? you can't just say well firetrucks are red, because they have never seen a firetruck. even when i told her that i didn't know how to explain what a color looked like to her, she just smiled & said, "that's ok. you just don't have to worry about that kind of stuff." my heart hurt a little bit. she was right. i take things, like seeing different colors, for granted.
i know that i have posted about christmas a lot lately, but i find myself thinking about my blind friend tonight. everyone is putting up pictures of their christmas trees on all the social networks & talking about all the awesome decorations & some of us will even get in our cars & go christmas light looking. & tonight i am sitting next to my lovely christmas tree & as silly as this might seem, i am thankful that i am able to see it. i am thankful that i can see the lights & the bulbs (ornaments) & the pretty snowflakes.  my mind wanders to my little friend & how she will never see those things. & then i start to think about other things that she will never get to see like sunsets, snow falling, fireworks, a thanksgiving day parade, the sky...

i am not writing this post so that we can all feel sorry for this blind girl, believe me, she has come to grips with it.
i am writing it so we can learn to be a little more grateful for the things that we see. that when we look at the world around us, we can do just that.

i may have perfect vision, but my dear little friend could see far more than i could.

but then again, that depends on your definition of see...