‘I can see clearly now…’

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By Erin McCommons

When I was about 14 months old, you know, just starting to toddle around, but still unsteady at times, I fell a couple of times within days of each other and hit my forehead. According to my parents, because I was too young to remember any of this, on one of the falls my forehead instead of swelling out and forming a nice goose egg, it swelled inward. They thought that was weird but I seemed to act fine so they just kept a close eye on me.

On the next fall, a couple days later came the big goose egg on my forehead. Several hours later they noticed that my eyes began to cross. Of course, they were frightened by this and were afraid that the swelling was more severe and had done more damage than they thought. After multiple visits with eye doctors and multiple tests done on my eyes it was determined that whatever happened when I fell had caused damage to the muscles in my eyes and as a result my eyes crossed. 

My vision was good, but with the muscles in my eyes not working together properly it affected my vision. Thankfully the doctors were able to correct my crossed eyes with wearing very thick “coke bottle” eye glasses that helped keep my eyes straight. So, from about the time, I was 22-months old glasses were an everyday part of my life. As soon as I would wake up, I wanted my glasses on. I found that if I went a long period of time without my glasses, I would get severe headaches. 

As I got old enough to play softball it was tricky trying to wear glasses and play softball especially when I played catcher some. Swimming was also a challenge because I didn’t wear my glasses in the pool. Anytime we went swimming I pretty much knew I would have a headache that night due to not wearing my glasses. As I got into school and continued to see eye doctors and attempted doing muscle strengthening exercises for my eyes there started to be talk of the possibility of doing a surgery on my eyes that could possibly correct the muscles. It wasn’t a guarantee but it was at least an option to get rid of the glasses or maybe at least be able to down size my glasses from the thick lens to a thinner lens. 

Over the years my parents and family had prayed over me and had laid hands on me asking for God to heal my eyes. I can vividly remember some of those times they prayed for me. Time went on and no healing. When the word surgery was mentioned, I was pretty adamant against it. I would tell the doctors and my parents that I didn’t know why they were even talking about surgery because God was going to heal my eyes. I was probably about nine years old when they first mentioned it.  I remember my mom talking to me about surgery a couple different times and my answer was always no. I would get mad when we talked about it and would tell her that I did not need surgery because God was going to heal my eyes. 

Reluctantly, I agreed to go ahead and start the process to have the surgery. I did not want to have to wear thick, “coke-bottle” glasses the rest of my life! Fast forward to spring of my fourth-grade school year, my younger sister and I were goofing around one afternoon. I was laying on the floor with my legs extended toward the ceiling and she was laying across my feet with her arms stretched out like an airplane. In our silliness, she fell off my feet and landed on me, hitting me in the face and breaking my glasses. I was upset knowing that I would have to order new glasses and wait for them to come in and would have to deal with the headaches of not being able to wear my glasses. 

As soon as we could we got to the doctor’s office and ordered my new glasses. It was going to take about a week for them to come in. In that weeks’ time we started noticing that my eyes were staying straight without my glasses. Even my teachers at school noticed that my eyes were staying straight. I wasn’t getting the headaches that I was so dreading and I was able to read and see things just fine without my glasses. Then when my glasses came in and I went and picked them up I put them on and couldn’t see WITH my glasses on. Everything was blurry.  I remember putting them on and trying to read a road sign and I couldn’t read it, but then when I took my glasses off, I could read it perfectly. 

Our first thought was that maybe the office had ordered the wrong prescription of lenses for my glasses, but they verified that they were the correct lenses. I continued to go on day-to-day without wearing my glasses, each day testing whether my eyes were going to continue to stay straight without the use of my glasses. They DID!! My eye surgery had previously been scheduled for June 4th.  After weeks of going without my glasses and continuing to be able to read and see just fine without them we realized that my glasses getting broken was not a coincidence. God had healed my eyes and wanted to show us his miracle. 

I went for my pre-op appointment with the eye doctor and he was perplexed, he didn’t know what or how it had happened but my eyes had corrected themselves and I didn’t need surgery. I told him that I knew what had happened. God had healed my eyes just like I had believed he would! We couldn’t deny that this was God. 

I continued to have some eye doctor visits after this happened to monitor my eyes. The doctors would always respond that they couldn’t explain how this had happened and all I could say to the doctors was that God had healed my eyes.

To this day, 30 years later, my eyes continue to stay straight. All glory to God!