So once again it has taken me longer to get to writing my blog posts, however this time, I do have a good excuse. Until today, I was not able to look at the glow of my computer screen for more than a few minutes since last Wednesday. I was walking out of the hangar Wednesday afternoon to have a flight lesson. The wind had been blowing all day pretty hard, so when I walked out of the hangar it was almost like walking into a mini hurricane. I had hardly taken a dozen steps when a something flew right into my right eyeball--not exactly a wound a man can be proud of. I walked blindly over to Whisky Bravo’s hangar and tried to flush it out and then sat in the office where I normally do my debriefing before flight with my eyes closed hoping that the pain would go away and I could go fly.
Needless to say, I wasn’t able to have my flying lesson, I walked back to my room and laid on my bed waiting for my eye to work properly. Of course, with my kind of luck, it wouldn’t cooperate. That night was definitely the roughest I have had since I last was recovering from surgery. It wasn’t lack of sleep or the waking up in the middle of the night, it was that pluswaking up with pain that was too deep to do anything about. Well, I think that sounds a little wrong. I believe that I have some pain meds that the hospital gave me after my last surgery, and I knew that I had some Tylenol in the glove box of my car. However, when you can't see and you are not exactly sure where the meds are, not to mention that it was only a possibility, trying to find that stuff was pretty much pointless. Okay, if I really stretched myself, I could have gone out to my car to get the Tylenol but as it turns out, it was parked behind the gate and it was raining.
When I got up in the morning, it felt like that whatever had flown into my eye was still in there. Jonathan ended up taking me to the ER, and to my surprise, no one was in there so we got right in. The hospital is like my home away from home, as awful as that sounds, I know all the procedures and the questions that they are going to ask. Everyone there could tell; they were all surprised at my prompt responses, especially cause there were plenty of complexities from all the heart issues. However, this was not like my normal visits. Normally I was going in because my heart was not behaving, or something life-threatening. So while I was lying on the bed rattling off my answers, I almost started to laugh. I have survived the Operating Room so many times I can’t even remember, yet this speck of whatever it was, defeated me. Very heroic.
So then it got even more hilarious, I do not like my eye being messed with, I don’t even like to give myself eye drops. I don’t like anything going near my eye. I don’t think that the ER doctor knew or cared what I thought. He walked in, asked me what happened, opened my eye and before I could protest, he had dropped some liquid that stung like fire in my eye. He did this 3 times each time, leaving the room for a few minutes then returning with the scary liquid. However this had several remarkable affects. 1. the pain had vanished from my right eye. 2. so had feeling that I even had a right eye. 3 my tongue went numb.
The doctor explained that the stuff he put in my eye was some sort of numbing liquid that only numbs the spot that it is in. Don’t ask me how it got to my tongue, I promise I didn’t lick my eye ball. Anyway, after shining a bunch of goofy lights into my eyes, I was told that I had gotten out whatever had gone in, but I had scratched, quite literally, the daylights out of my eye, and that it would recover soon, just keep it shut and stay away from light. He prescribed some drops to put in my eye to keep out infection and sent me home.
I must confess that it has taken far longer to heal that I could have imagined, I was supposed to go to Disney World on Saturday with a friend of mine who flies helicopters, he has a friend that was getting us in for free. Obviously, that was postponed. I have been a cave man since that awful Wednesday; the slightest light was like looking into the sun, well I thought it was until I actually did look at the sun, I don’t recommend trying that, by the way. My poor roommates must have been going crazy at me constantly asking them to turn out the little tiny lamps or turn the computer screens in a different direction. One good thing that came of this is my new, very high, respect for blind people. So needless to say, I laid on my bed listening to books or music on my iPod. I covered a lot of ground, I listened to the second half of Shadow of the Almighty, which I was already in the process of listening to, nearly the whole the New Testament, several Sherlock Holmes adventures, and 2 other novels.
However, looking back, I wonder if that time was well used. One thing that Jim Elliot talked about in one of his letters or in his journal was how Satan never lets us get quiet. He is always keeping noise in our ears, always keeping us occupied or thinking about something earthly, he never allows us to get quiet. Should I have not used more of that time praying, or getting quiet and pondered all the questions I have?
And again, I think about way I use my time. I usually listen to books on my iPod while I work. I have three reasons for doing this. First, I am a slow reader and have horrible comprehension, and it is hard to find time to read. Second, listening to a book while I work or run is more efficient way of using my time and I understand it better when someone is telling it to me than when reading it myself. And thirdly, I spend most of my time working on my own. I think those are good reasons, but I think that it can be taken too far as well.
So much time is spent in listening to music or books, that I turn into a robot, everyone around me becomes unimportant, I have entered into my own world. It is noise keeping me busy, and makes me self-consumed, and when someone asks me a question I find it irritating cause it interrupts my book. Even though I am listening to the Bible, I find that I am not paying attention to it, I never listen to something, pause it, and think about how it pertains to my life or what I should do with the heaps of gold that I am getting out of the this incredible book. All the questions that come up while I am listening drift away and I never ponder them.
I know that most young people in today’s world have the same problem, even at home in the village. Everyone has an iPod or mp3 player, and I know that many hours have been spent with ear buds in our ears. As I said earlier, it is making us self-consumed, and it divides us. What if we spent at least some of that time, just getting quiet and talking to God, or praying for your friends, or thinking about what we learned at the last teaching or at devotions that morning? I think that we would have more experiences with God, we would probably realize that God has been trying to talk to us for quite some time and hasn’t been able to get our attention.
I love and miss everyone at home, and can't wait to see you again. And now I mention it, I will be in the village for Johnny and Maranatha’s wedding! Cant wait to see you all!
Your brother in Christ,
Austin
