“Walk by Faith and NOT by Sight…”

Dave woke up Saturday morning, to find that more of his vision has vanished.   It has really hit him/us hard.

He had and I think maybe I had too, convinced himself that it wasn’t going to get any worse, and when it did, and it’s going fast, it has been extremely hard!

I don’t ever think that I have had such a breakdown as I did Wednesday at about 2am. I was up all night, and screaming into the couch…and I just yelled, “GOD, I DON’T SEE YOUR HAND IN ANY OF THIS…I DON’T FEEL YOUR PRESENCE, AND I DON’T KNOW IF YOU ARE EVEN LISTENING!, WHERE ARE YOU?” (something to that affect)

Anyhow, in the morning, when Austin was doing his handwriting test, he lost his paper to copy from, this happens often, so I usually tell him just to pick a Bible verse and copy it, he randomly picked Psalm 23…as he was writing it, he said “Mom, listen to this verse I’m writing…” and he read it to me. 

I told him to go share that with Dave, as I thought that it would encourage him.  Soon after that, he was watching his school DVD and his language teacher said, “Weare going to study Psalm 23.”   He stopped the DVD and RAN to tell me! – then as he turned over his language assignment it had the words “Walk by faith, and not by sight!” Okay…hello!

 No coinky dink!

THEN…(yes, there is more…) We decide to go to Wednesday night service, which we haven’t really done in the past – and the pastor (which we hadn’t talked to since we left for GA) says this  “I don’t normally do this, but I feel lead to do things a little differently tonight…and he proceeded to read the verse about calling the elders of the church to annoint and pray, so he asked them to come up to the front and then he said, “I would like Dave and Monique Strickland to come up and let these elders pray and annoint them” Of course Dave and I just lost it immediately!

He shared with me later that there are these lights that circle slowly around his eyes on occassion (apparently something that happens with this disease) and he told me that when the elders and all the people that felt lead to come up and lay hands on us were praying for us, those lights were in both eyes and going crazy! He said they were circling around really fast and they have never done that!…

THEN….on our way home, we always pass this old baptist church, and it has a neon sign that usually has what’s happening at the church, etc…literally, literally….as we are passing it, in HUGE letters, it says PSALM 23.
Can you believe that?! There you are God….You ARE listening!

*Note*  Dave suffers from disease that gradually steals your eyesight called Retinitis Pigmentosa or RP