On Tuesday, I paid a visit to my eye doctor. As I sat in her office, she paged through my patient folder. “You’ve been coming here since… October 1990!” she said, a little shocked.
It’s been a long time, but I remember those days well, back when I was seven years old and had a problem with my eyes crossing. To correct the issue, I had to wear a stick-on eye patch over my right eye.
Wearing a beige eye patch to school isn’t exactly something every kid dreams about (and I already had coke-bottle glasses!). So I only wore the patch after school. But, for “Show and Tell” that year, I decided to bring in my new accessory to show the other kids in class.
Why I decided to make a gutsy move like that I’ll never really know. Probably because the box of eye patches came with a sheet of animal stickers. And, in the world of second grade, stickers were a highly sought-after form of currency.
So, against my parents’ better judgment, I brought a box of eye patches to school. My mom told me later that she worried my classmates would poke fun at me or that I’d feel like an outsider. But, much to her surprise, exactly the opposite happened. When she came to pick me up after school, a crowd of second-graders surrounded her.
“Mrs. Aydin! Mrs. Aydin!” they said. “Can we have eye patches too?”
Everyone wanted one. They thought having an eye patch was just about the coolest thing in the world.
I passed out all the extra eye patches I had on hand that day, and my mom and I returned home with an important lesson learned. That there truly are kind souls in this great big world. And that our struggles and scars–as trying as they may sometimes be–can make us stick out in the very best way.
Has God ever completely surprised you with an “eye patch miracle”? Share your story below!
