Patching had been extremely frustrating for me for the first six weeks. It was so hard and I wasn’t seeing any results. I was patching 4-5 hours a day which required a huge sacrifice from me and my family. I was starting to wonder if it was all going to be worth it.
Here is what I wrote about this time on my personal blog:
“And then the general conference for my church came. On the Saturday night session, I went to the women’s session alone and just soaked it all in. Every talk felt like exactly what I needed to hear. It felt like fears and worries were disappearing and the spirit was so strong. In the final talk our prophet, Russell M Nelson issued a challenge to all the women of the church. The first was to take a 10 day fast from social media, which I definitely needed.
Then he issued a challenge for us to read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover, highlighting any verse that mentioned Jesus Christ before the end of the year. I was scribbling down everything as fast as I could, feeling excited. The last time a prophet challenged us to do this was when I was engaged to Zac and I didn’t do it. Ever since, I’ve been excited for another chance.
Here are his words:
“Second, I invite you to read the Book of Mormon between now and the end of the year. As impossible as that may seem with all you are trying to manage in your life, if you will accept this invitation with full purpose of heart, the Lord will help you find a way to achieve it. And, as you prayerfully study, I promise that the heavens will open for you. The Lord will bless you with increased inspiration and revelation.
As you read, I would encourage you to mark each verse that speaks of or refers to the Savior. Then, be intentional about talking of Christ, rejoicing in Christ, and preaching of Christ with your families and friends. You and they will be drawn closer to the Savior through this process. And changes, even miracles, will begin to happen.”
As he said that last line, “changes, even miracles, will begin to happen” I felt a very overwhelming spiritual feeling. The very distinct impression came to my mind, “if you will do this, you will see a miracle; your eye will be healed.” It was so powerful I just started to well up and shake. The idea of having my eye be healed seemed too good to be true.
I kept thinking about it and realized that I would be reading with the patch on. This made me cry more because I knew that it was going to be very difficult, but how could I not do it after that experience?
That was two weeks ago, yesterday. Since that time I have already seen miracles taking place. Every morning I get up at 5:30 to give myself time to read before the kids wake up. I usually don’t have time to read the 6 pages all at once so I finish during Everly’s nap or later at night. I shared the experience with Zac and the kids and they have all been so supportive. Eloise came over once and told me, “I know it’s
Zac is always trying to help give me a few extra minutes by taking the kids downstairs so I can concentrate longer. Other family members encourage me and help me remember to keep on working
So far, I can’t say that I’m getting a lot out of what I’m reading, I’m hoping that will come! It’s pretty much all I can do to figure out what the words are and recognize when it’s talking about Christ. Luckily, this isn’t the first time I’ve read it so I can draw on past memories of comprehension.
The first miracle happened a few nights after I started when I was tweezing my eyebrows. All of
The second miracle occurred in the temple. I was there about a week ago and I had meant to bring and wear my patch because I had only worn it for about 2 hours that day. I forgot it, so I just decided to cover my eye with my hand. I must have been putting pressure on my eye because after I removed my hand, my good eye couldn’t see. Everything was
I definitely had a silent panic attack that I had ruined my good eye forever and would become blind. I had the thought come that I should force my “bad” eye to see and take over. I felt like Harry Potter trying to focus on a complicated spell or Matilda trying to use her powers. I stared at the temple worker at the front of the room and willed my bad eye to take over.
In a quick instant, it did and things became more clear. I did a silent jump for joy in my chair and tried again and again. I started being able to hold my gaze with my bad eye and learned what it felt like for it to take over. After a few minutes, my good eye could see perfectly fine again and so I couldn’t switch. I just pushed on it again to make it blurry so I could keep practicing.
By the end of the night, I was able to switch back and forth from eye to eye, even when my good eye wasn’t blurry. My head was throbbing and everything got blurry and my eyes were screaming at me to stop. It was like doing P90X after not working out for a few months, my muscles were exhausted. I was on cloud 9 though.
I came home and jumped on the bed and said, “Zac, watch this, what are my eyes doing!” and I showed him how I could switch. I don’t think other people can comprehend what a huge deal this is. My right eye is just usually there, doing nothing, while the left eye does all the work, the doctor said it only is accounting for about 20% of what I see. Being able to control it is an amazingly huge step for me. It was so exciting and I couldn’t fall asleep forever that night.
I called my doctor and he was so excited for me and very surprised that I was suddenly seeing these results. He definitely wants me to keep doing whatever I’m doing.
I feel like there are two parts, physically my eyes are being strengthened with the reading, it’s like an intense workout every day, of
I know that this isn’t the end of the miracles that will happen for me if I keep working hard. I feel so blessed to be able to have this experience. If I hadn’t been born with this eye dysfunction, I would have never been able to have these incredible experiences and feel so close to my Father in Heaven. I guess I am seeing, first hand, why we need to have trials in our lives. They really are blessing…eventually.”
The miracles continued and I continued to see more progress. The progress is slow, but ever since that promise of a miracle, I feel like all the right people and ideas have fallen right into my path to help me get my miracle.
The next exciting moment was the day I learned about vision therapy, read about that here.