In Spite of it All! | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: In Spite of it All! | Previous Challenge Entry
By Karen Polk`
02/12/14
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There was a heavy silence during the ride home from the doctor’s. The young lady sat in the back of the family car, staring out the window as her father, a minister, drove and her mother, sat close beside him, with a tear stained face.
According to the doctor, the prognosis was grim. He shared with her and her parents that the tests results declared her legally blind and she would eventually experience total blindness. The retina in both eyes were deteriorating and there was no cure. She would have to learn to live with the disease.
So many questions to herself and God filled the young lady’s mind on the hour drive home. She thought about her father, strong in his heart for God, and so gentle in his responses to circumstances. She could see a side of her mother’s tearful, yet peaceful face and knew she was in a praying mode at the very moment, yet the young lady couldn’t pinpoint how she herself was truly feeling. So many emotions! So many unanswered questions! The report from the doctor was a crushing blow to the many dreams the active fifteen year old young lady had! How would she finish high school? How would she put on her own makeup and choose her own clothes? And then the questions of marriage and children, and the one that unnerved her the most, “Would I ever be able to drive a car?” She was devastated at the thought! Before now she had enjoyed daydreaming, saying to herself, “If I had wheels, I could fly into independence!” Now it seemed all her dreams had just come crashing!
As her father pulled into the drive of their ranch style home, the young lady felt a deep sense of grief overwhelm her. It would all be so different for her and her parents now. Her childhood and teen years to the present had had its normal challenges but nothing that compared to the current trial of her life.
Her father opened the front door, stepped back in his usual gentlemanly way, and allowed her mother and herself to enter in. She knew where she needed to go. She wasn’t completely blind just yet, for which she was grateful, but even if she were she could find her way there without a problem. It was a very familiar place to her. She spent several hours a day there, often with her parents nearby. This time, though, she went there alone as her parents headed to the kitchen for a much needed cup of coffee.
As she sat at the piano, which had once been her mother’s, the young lady placed her hands on the familiar keys, closed her eyes and began to play. First, timidly and quietly, unsure of the song she should play. But then she knew. She knew the song that came to mind was the truth of her soul, yes, even in the midst of her shattered dreams and the uncertainty of her future.
The music rang forth in a way she had never played before. Her parents stepped into the living room doorway, and stood listening, amazed. They had heard their daughter play hundreds of times, but now, at a time like this, they listened in awe at the song that poured forth from her hands as she closed her eyes and lifted her face toward heaven. “It is well with my soul” the music so beautifully and peacefully came forth.
As time went on for the young lady, she eventually traded her dream of “wheels” for a white cane and a guide dog. She attended college and was blessed in the first year with a husband to be. She eventually married and gave birth to two sons.
In the very beginning, upon receiving the prognosis of her eyesight, she knew she had a choice to make. She could choose to let the trial of blindness defeat her and make her bitter and quit as if it were the very end of life or she could accept it as part of her spiritual journey and allow God to be her guide as she walked the path of faith. She chose the latter, and in doing so, received much blessedness in her life and soul as she continued to proclaim, “It is well with my soul”, for she knew it wasn't truly the end unless she chose to quit.

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