My Journey to Inner Space...

 

Have you ever had the experience of looking up into the vast night sky, searching for the brightest star in the Universe, and finding only dull lights up there?  When I was a little girl, I spent a lot of time searching the heavens.  I was amazed at just how endless that vast expanse of space seemed.  My friends had told me to look for the "brightest star," and so I tried.  I would get so frustrated because I could not see anything bright up there.  It just looked like a lot of little pinpoint dots on a black canvas.  Then, a miracle happened!  One night I discovered that if I focused my eyes just slightly to the left of whatever star I was looking at, voila, it became as bright as it could be.  It was as though it came to life.  I could see it.  I could see that bright, bright star.

From this single discovery of a seven-year-old searching a star filled sky, my curiosity was piqued and as I grew older, there arose in me a yearning to learn more about that boundless expanse of outer space.  Three questions began forming in my head that eventually would shape my life and lead me on a journey that not only looked beyond our visible and invisible universe but helped me to look into my own inner space.  This singular experience launched me to where I am today.

The first question that I started asking myself was why is it that I have to adjust my focus in order to see that one, bright star?

It wasn't until I was in my teens that I learned why my quirky vision of that bright star was askew.  An optometrist told me that I had a "lazy eye" (a condition known as strabismus).  For some reason, my right eye liked to wander outward and didn't work as it should with my left eye.  It had a mind of its own.  The doctor prescribed glasses and gave me exercises to do.

For the time being, a whole new world of vision was opened up to me.  I no longer had to sit in front of the class in school in order to see.  Words on the written page were clearer.  And looking at the brightest star was no longer an exercise in frustration.  I even learned the love of reading because most of the blur I was used to seeing on the written page disappeared.

My second question was what lies beyond what we can see with our naked eyes in that expanse of open space?

As I looked for answers to this question, I often thought how wonderful it would be if we could travel amongst the stars and get a close up view of them.  I studied Astronomy and learned about the many constellations and the names of the planets that make up our solar system.

As I grew older, I discovered that there were others who were thinking just like me.  Scientists were finding stronger and stronger telescopes and began exploring ways to visit outer space.

My late husband worked for McDonnell-Douglas in the late 1950's (Douglas Aircraft then) as a draftsman on the moon walk program.  At that time I thought how far out that project was.  It really was "far out"!  Far out in space!  Science and technology were bringing space travel from the imagination of Hollywood screen writers to reality.  And we were experiencing a great deal of it through the miracle of television.

Who would have thought that in my lifetime I would watch a man from earth walk on the moon?  My childhood questions of what lies beyond have been brought into focus by way of the amazing Hubble Telescope.

My last question was what is my relationship with the creator of all of this?

Time and experience have led me on a spiritual journey that was just as lazy as my lazy eye!  In my youth, I had not yet discovered my own "inner space."  My relationship with the Creator of our vast universe was anything but centered in goodness.  I lived the lazy, easy way of life for far too many years.  I didn't know it then, but I needed "glasses" to help my spiritual vision become focused.

Sometimes life offers us solutions to difficult problems in unthinkable ways.  For me, those glasses came at a time in my life when I was spiraling out of control, and in a most unusual form.

At the age of fifty-six, I was diagnosed with another eye disorder that was beyond lazy eye!  The medical name for my condition is Fuchs Dystrophy.  In laymen's terms, I was going blind because my corneas were thickening at an alarming rate.  This news literally brought me to my knees.  As I groped for answers in darkness and searched my soul--my inner space, if you will--I was slowly guided to the brightest hope my dim eyes could ever see.  It was a hope far brighter than that early brightest star.

I learned that blindness isn't just a physical loss of sight, but it can also be a spiritual one.  I learned that it took my threat of physical blindness to see that I was blind spiritually.  I learned that spiritual blindness isn't measured on a 20/20 eye chart.  Sometimes it takes a crisis in our lives to be able to "read it!"

As I journeyed through my inner space, I found a bright hope.  Just like trying to see that star in the heavens in my childhood, I just had to take a little detour to the left and voila, there it was, right where it had always been.

I heard a story once about a blind person who wanted to know if there was anything worse than losing eyesight.  His answer came in four words: "Yes, losing your vision."

From a seven-year-old with faulty vision looking at a sky full of stars, to discovering how perfect the heavens are through modern day technology, to nearly losing my eyesight completely, I found my relationship with the Creator of it all.  And because I turned my life around, He blessed me.  After six eye surgeries, He restored my sight.  I now look at the night sky and I am reminded of a quote from Martin Luther King, "Only in the darkness can you see the stars."

I found solace in the scriptures as I read of the account in John 9:1-41 about the time Jesus was healing the blind man.  He not only healed his physical blindness, but he also healed his spirit.  The blind man confessed, "...I was blind, now I see." (v.25)

These same words are expressed in John Newton's Amazing Grace, "I was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see."

That brightest star that eluded me all those years ago is now my beacon.