Visions

 

“ …. I saw visions of God” Ezekiel 1:1. NIV

        * “You are my vision!”

Throughout my journey with lupus my eyes and vision have been threatened over and over from medications and/or disease activity.  Several times I have developed Plaquenil toxicity that can progress to blindness.  I was taken off Plaquenil and after 6 months the problem resolved.

One Sunday when I was scared to death I was going blind, the first hymn of the service was “Be Thou my vision!”  It hit me between the eyes!  …  just what I needed to hear.  Recently, I’ve been diagnosed with dry macular degeneration with central and peripheral vision loss.  The prospect of blindness hangs over me!

Your vision of the world is very much colored by what you think.  Certain patterns of thinking can cause anger, anxiety, and depression.  Some thoughts that can cause depression are all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization, mental filtering, disqualifying the positive, jumping to the conclusions, magnifying (catastorphizing) or minimizing, emotional reasoning, musterbating, labeling, and personalizing.

When the Lord is your vision your patterns of thinking produce joy and peace.  Among thought patterns that come from the Lord and produce joy and peace are love, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Your vision of the world when looking through the lenses of depression is dark, hopeless, and helpless.  Your vision of the world through the lenses colored by the thoughts of Christ is light.

I can choose to shut down and let my world be darkness, pain, confusion, and loneliness or can choose to be open to the light of the vision of the lessons I can let the Lord teach me: letting go and letting God;  taking one day at a time;  making God my vision; trusting that the Lord knows what I need and supplies all my needs according to His riches; and He redeems all things in His perfect wisdom, grace, and timing.      

Breath Prayer- Take a scriptural promise, turn it into a seven syllable affirmation give or take a few, in present tense and second person, and say it on the perfect breath (in to a count of  3 out of a count to a count of 6) as you breathe out.