A few days ago, I laid down on a table with a donut cushion to stabilize my head. I couldn't see the nurses when I first entered the room. They were hidden by the dim light, the blue masks, and my own blindness. Ten minutes later, I had vision. Cloudy, like looking through smoke, but I could see. With my own eyes.
The process wasn't free of fear despite its rapidity. Fully awake, I had my eyelids taped back and my cornea exposed first to a machine that cut off a perfectly shaped flap, then to the laser that would burn off single layers of corneal skin one at a time. The whole machine was run by a program, not by my surgeon. His main job was sealing my cornea flap back onto my eye correctly.
During the surgery, I felt disconnected from my own eyes. When they are held open and not allowed to blink, being instructed to fixate on a steadily blinking green light, it feels more like a bad dream than being conscious during a medical procedure. The light becomes your place of unfocusing on what is being done to your eye even as it becomes your sole focus, your one constant, keeping your eyes from wandering and suffering the indiscriminate burn of the laser.
Though the skill of the surgeon and the advancement of the technology inspired in me an appropriate level of awe, I find that they only attest to the even greater awesomeness of the eye itself. The cornea is made of skin, living and renewable, like the skin on my arms and fingers and the bottoms of my feet and the inside of my mouth. But cornea skin is clear. Skin that I can see through, perfectly. Even the clear materials of contacts and glasses distort vision to some extent. It is impossible to make them so clear that they have no affect on vision.
My contacts, for example, kept me from registering distance. After climbing a mountain and looking out on the city below, I always felt as if I could pick up the tiny cars and people and put them where I wanted, like museum dioramas of the battle of Gettysburg or ancient Aztec civilizations. I had to learn to keep appropriate following distances when driving by learning the rate at which cars shrunk and grew when I held back or stopped too near to rear bumpers. My world was flat because of pieces of plastic glued to my eyes.
And in ten minutes, by burning of all things, the world became real. Horseback riding a few days after the surgery, I looked over the steep edge beyond the trail and knew, knew for sure and not just in conjecture, that if I fell I would fall a long way. The horizon became an unfathomable, unreachable distance, not just a line separating air from dirt. Everything became larger, though it has yet to get clearer. But it will. And then clarity will match the new dimensions.
My eyes have been repaired, but this smaller surgery has only served as a reminder of the bigger healing that I am working toward each day. Layers are being burned away one at a time, not painfully really, though I often tell myself that I should be fearful, that I'm losing pieces of myself. It doesn't really hurt so much as it is scary. Scary, that I'm putting myself completely under the mercy of my Surgeon, blind and helpless on the table. Daily, hourly, each infinitesimal cell of rebellion is being scorched and shriveled for the purpose of clarity and focus. I know the focus is vital. I have the light, all I have is the light, and I know that allowing my eyes to wander from that point, I risk losing my vision forever. But I so want to wander, to settle for the mediocre and try to live my life with half vision, half clarity. Everything feels as if it is being forced open, told to concentrate on a single point, to wait and not move until the cutting away is complete. If I move before it is finished, I will be scarred. But the point is secure. The lighthouse beacon continues to shine strong, blinking intermittently to remind me of His presence.
Burning and cutting done, there will be clarity. At first everything will be smoky, hazy, unfocused, but then the skin will be restored, the tears wiped away, and the whole universe will turn out to be bigger and more beautiful than anything I could have imagined.
