Traumatic Iritiis

I shouldn't be accident prone. Ten years of ballet, I do Yoga...You'd think I'd be the picture of grace and poise. Not so much. I injure myself on a fairly regular basis and always in the most ridiculous way. I sprained my ankle falling off a tricycle...I was thirty-five. Fractured my wrist walking by the meat cooler as a cook was violently kicking it open. (I have to add that even though he kicked the door into my wrist I didn't drop the case of beer I was carrying). I slipped on ice and hurt my knee. Exactly one week later I fell down a flight of icy stairs and hurt my shoulder...I should really stay off ice...I had four surgeries from those two falls...ice sucks. Anyway. You get the point. I'm accident prone. 


My most recent injury involved a therapy band, a doorknob and my eyes. When I tied the thick band around the door knob I thought it didn't look too secure but surely I'd notice if it started to slip? Nope. It hit so hard and fast I was on the floor writhing in pain before I knew what had happened. I was terrified to look. I expected to find copious amounts of blood and bits of exploded eyeball oozing down my cheeks. I didn't see any of that. Mostly because I couldn't see. Piper got ice packs for me. Alex lamented that it didn't get caught on video. I could have been on Tosh.O...gee, sorry I missed that! The eye doctor told me I was extremely lucky. A blow like that could have cost me my vision. Traumatic Iritis. That's just a fancy way of saying the colored parts of my eyes were swollen. Made the pupils look weird and hurt like hell every time they adjusted to light. He sent me home with steroid drops and orders to rest.


Rest... 


Rest is something I've never been very good at. Sitting around is not in my skill set, that's why I have a physical job. But you don't fool around with your eyes. So  I had an unexpected day off and I couldn't take the kids exploring. I couldn't do anything. I figured I may as well read one of the twenty books I'd lugged to NC. I picked up the one I was reading at the bed and breakfast. It's a very good book. I don't know why I hadn't already finished it. Every time I'd reach for it something stopped me. But now. Now I had a whole day to fill so I read the whole thing. Good thing weeping didn't hurt my eyes. This book is about a spiritual journey and I swear I could have written it. I'd been raised southern baptist. Loud, frightening preachers who banged pulpits and damned our collective souls to the eternal fires of hell. Very dramatic. I remember looking around church searching for a face that mirrored mine. Someone I could meet eyes with, roll them and shrug like, "Pfft...do you believe this guy?" It was a vain search. What I saw were enraptured faces. These people were not only buying into what was being said, they really felt something. And I felt nothing. It made me feel defective. The older I got the more skeptical I became. I went to pastors, friends, family with questions. When you tell people you don't believe in God, they look at you like you've said you enjoy murdering puppies. After years of feeling like a hypocritical phony I stopped going to church. I stopped pursuing anything spiritual and even developed a disdain for it. But I missed believing in something. Here, in the pages of this book, I'd found the God I believe in. I'd gone on this North Carolina journey to find my way out of the darkness and thanks to getting the hell knocked out of me I'd found light. A light that had been closed off to me for years. A light I'd closed off. 


It was a real eye opener, pun intended.