Podcast

Born Blind: Seeing the Miraculous. Karen Wingate

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Unshakable whole podcast, where real life intersects redeeming love. I’m Kelly Hall, and this is where we wrestle through faith questions such as, how do I trust God’s heart when his ways and delays are breaking mind? We’ll hear from people just like you and me who have experienced God’s faithfulness when life didn’t unfold as they expected my prayers, that God would renew our hope and his word and his love through these conversations.

Kelly: Hey friends. Can you imagine being legally blind your entire life and then suddenly in your fifties being able to see things you’d only dreamed about? My guest today will literally open the eyes of our hearts as she unfolds her story through multiple childhood surgeries, a cancer scare, and a courageous doctor who was obviously led and guided by the Holy Spirit. The prayers and [00:01:00] surrenders you’ll hear about along her journey are deeply impactful. Karen Wingate is my guest today, and although I haven’t met her in person, she has quickly become one of my faith heroes.

Kelly: She’s courageously wrestled through disappointments and struggles and allowed God to walk with her through every storm so that she can declare with wholehearted devotion.

Kelly: I will follow you, Lord, no matter what. So let me introduce you to Karen. She is the author of the award-winning book With Fresh Eyes, 60 Insights into the miraculously Ordinary from a woman born blind. Karen shares her message of hope, help, and healing through her writing.

Kelly: With Proverbs 31 Ministries, her personal blog, and her speaking ministry. After years as a pastor’s wife in church ministry, Karen and her husband have retired to the desert in Tucson, Arizona, to be closer to family. Karen, I am so grateful to have you share this time with me.

Karen: Well, thanks [00:02:00] for having me.

Kelly: I was so excited to discover you’re only two hours away.

Karen: I know. I am too.

Kelly: Well, Karen, would you just walk us through your basic story. Just give us an overview

Karen: You know, well, what is it like to be legally blind? And when I was first born, doctors described my vision as looking through an industrial strength shower curtain, where you would just see a, a blur of a blaze of color.

Karen: And back then they believed that you needed to get light on the optic nerve just as quickly as possible. They also had some wrong. Ideas of how to fix the problem that I had. I was, one of, one of my issues was that I was born with congenital cataracts. And so at age 10 months, I had my first of eight childhood surgeries and, and a progression of surgeries gave me barely functional vision

Karen: They fitted me with glasses right away and I had. Bifocals very early on. And so I, you know, I wore , the quintessential coke bottle bottom glasses [00:03:00] and that, that gave me the ability to see maybe about a six foot sphere. And I could read pretty much anything if it was three inches away from my face.

Karen: Now the cataracts were only one part of the problem. My whole eyeball structure was compromised. It was a, a genetic defect. By the age of nine, the doctor had said, this is gonna be the last surgery. I don’t think we can do anything more. Well, up to that point, I didn’t realize that I was different from anybody.

Karen: I, I mean, people said that I was, but I, you know, I just had no I idea of what other people could see because this was my world. So I think by age nine, I, it finally hit me. I am different from other children. I can’t do what other children do. This surgery didn’t work. It didn’t improve anything that I could tell.

Karen: Hmm.

Karen: And three days after the surgery, I came to my mom and I, and I shared my discouragement with her [00:04:00] and she said, now this was just so totally unlike my mother. I mean, she was a believer, but we came from a very conservative background where miracles. We’re reserved only for Bible characters and missionaries.

Karen: And she, she turned away from me and she said, Karen, God can do miracles. Wow. So I, I thought, ah, okay, and nobody told me to do this. But for the next two weeks, I prayed every day that God would heal my eyes. Every morning I’d wake up and I’d say, please God, let this be the day that I can see. And pretty soon, you know, my prayers started tapering off.

Karen: And, you know, the Holy Spirit must have put this idea in my mind because I prayed, Lord. Help me cope if this is the way I’m going to be, just to help me cope with limited vision.

Karen: And I saw him do that in amazing ways over the next 50 years.

Karen: Mm-hmm.

Karen: That he was always with me.

Karen: He was always faithful. He cared about the littlest things in [00:05:00] life, you know, like college entrance exams and tired eyeballs, and how to find my way. At night through college campus or how to find a bathroom in an airport. I mean, I learned to pray about it all. And he was, he was just always so faithful and, and he helped me through some very difficult times.

Karen: You know, life was not easy from that point on by any means. It got, in fact, it got harder as I learned to adjust as a, as a site impaired person into a sighted world.

Kelly: Gosh, I do agree with you. That had to be the Holy Spirit because when I first heard you say this, I began to pray every night for two weeks that God would restore my vision.

Kelly: My heart just guarded itself for this young girl who was about to be disappointed and how would she deal with that? So I love how graciously, how mercifully the Lord just met you in that place and gave you the wisdom. To pray, Lord, if this is the [00:06:00] way it’s gonna be, then help me cope. Yes. At such a young age.

Karen: Well, and it was, you know, it was like the Holy Spirit was just putting this other idea and, that’s so true, Kelly, of our prayers that, we’ve gotta, this idea of how God ought to answer our prayers. And if he doesn’t do it, just the way that I have spelled out, then I’m gonna. Push God to the side.

Karen: And in reality, God has so much, , such a bigger and better plan ready for us. And he says, you know, hey, would you at least consider my way that it, I might have even a better idea on how to accomplish this than you do.

Kelly: Hmm. I love that you learned how to give him everything, pray about everything.

Kelly: I’m curious about two things. So I would like to understand how you got through college, what that was like for you being blind, but I would also like you to address what it was like for you, your self-esteem, your worth. How did you view yourself at the time that you were in college how did God deal [00:07:00] with that?

Karen: Well, let me answer that one first. Okay. And this was what? This was the incident that I was sharing with you earlier that has been. On my mind to share. When I was a junior in high school, I was in the four H program and I was, for some crazy reason, I got involved with public speaking, which is just so insane because I couldn’t read my notes.

Karen: I was really uptight about being perfect about everything. I had horrible stage fright, and yet I was just driven. To do public speaking . I was at the county level contest and everybody was pumped that I was, you know, it was my year to win. No, this was when I was a senior in high school.

Karen: So everybody was pumped that I was gonna win the contest. Well, I didn’t, I think I was number two or number three. And one of the judges came up to me afterwards and she said, I just wanted you to know. That I subtracted points from your [00:08:00] score because your eyes wiggle. Oh, and that must be because of nervousness.

Karen: And that’s very disconcerting to the audience.

Kelly: Oh my goodness. Wow. And I

Karen: said. That’s part of my eye defect. I have a disease called or not a disease, a syndrome called Nystagmus where your eyes jiggle her back and forth uncontrollably. I can’t help that. And she said, oh, I’m sorry, but the judge’s verdict is final.

Karen: Oh, wow. Karen Kelly. I was devastated. Yeah. I was in the car with a bunch of other four Hs with my four H leader going home from the contest and I basically curled up in a corner of the car and the next day I told my mother I’m quitting everything. I’m sorry for the emotion. I think this is the first time I’ve told this story publicly.

Kelly: Thank you so much for sharing

Karen: and, I just, I was afraid to look anybody in the eye because they’re gonna judge me by my wiggly [00:09:00] eyeballs. So I, I expressed that to my mother and she said, well, then you’d better call your four H leader and tell her. And I did. I said, , I’m quitting. I’m just quitting it all.

Karen: And she said, Karen, don’t do that. And then she spoke to me, adult to adult. And told me of a time when she was told she could no longer have a children, and she had put on some weight and somebody came up to her and said, oh, are you expecting again, you know, just one of those comments. And she told me how it devastated her, but she realized that she needed to move on and she couldn’t allow other people’s opinions to define who she was.

Kelly: Mm.

Karen: And. I think what makes me so teary is, yeah, I lost that one contest, but look what I’m doing today. Yeah. That’s so amazing how far you’ve

Kelly: come

Karen: and , my wiggly eyes still bother me. It is something I’m sensitive about and that’s an area where I just have [00:10:00] really had to trust God that he’s in charge of my relationships, he’s in charge of my connections.

Karen: If he has a plan for me, he wants me to go forward, no matter what other people might think about me as a person. Hmm. And I, and I so appreciate Mrs. Clark’s sharing that with me because I’m not the only one. I’m, you know, my issue is wiggly eyeballs, but all of us have those little physical flaws or personality quirks that want to hold us back from being all that God calls us to be.

Karen: I. Absolutely. And so you asked about how did I get through college? I think it was, it was that that just set the stage for me to just keep pressing on, keep, keep moving forward, keep trusting that God has a plan for me, even if other people think you can’t do it, Karen, you can if God’s in it.

Kelly: That’s so powerful.

Kelly: Wow. God so graciously again, [00:11:00] sent someone to you who had another heartache story that you could draw strength from and that would help you not feel so isolated. But it built courage in you and it built the theology. God wanted you to have to walk through your suffering with your eyes set firmly on him.

Kelly: It, it’s so beautiful.

Karen: Well, and you know. It would be so easy to say, why did God let that happen to you? Why did God let that mean woman into your life to say that, that insensitive comment. But what had I prayed when I was nine? I had prayed, Lord help me cope. He helped me cope by sending this woman, the four H leader into my life to speak words of hope to me.

Karen: And you know, that’s something that I have learned so much that. God has a, an, an endpoint destination for us, but he’s also with us all along the way. And so part of our story is how did God show up on a daily [00:12:00] basis to help lead us through those difficult times.

Kelly: That’s right. That is really the key. That just gives me God bumps because one of the things that I am so aware of is that I would’ve given in to the weariness of our situation, if God were not a God who speaks, he is alive. He is on his throne, he is alive in me, and he speaks and knows how to speak to the deepest needs of my heart.

Kelly: And when I have questions, if it’s not the right question, he can correct the question and then he can speak exactly what I need to hear. And he’s encouraged me so much through his word, through other people and through our circumstances in just kind ways that I have been able to say. You are faithful.

Kelly: You’re worthy of my trust no matter what. I’m gonna keep running back to you.

Karen: Yes. Yes.

Kelly: Well, now tell us about college. So you were able to continue to gain your worth from the Lord after this encounter with this woman. [00:13:00] You just kept saying, God, I, I trust you. If you’re in it, I know you’ll help me do it. So tell us about even the courage to get into college and then the journey of college and meeting your husband.

Karen: I had just. Unrealistic ideas of what I could do. But on the other hand, I had people telling me, oh, you should go be in vocational rehabilitation so you can be with people of your own kind. And, and I said, no, I’m gonna go be a normal person. I’m gonna do all these things. And you know, as I said, I had been involved in the four H program and so what I wanted to do was to be a home economist.

Karen: With the government’s extension service and you know, lead youth four H groups. And I just, I loved all those, those home things and the consumer education. And I decided to, you know, to make myself more marketable, I would get a teaching certificate at the same time.

Karen: I was a straight A student. I got the senior award of the year at the end of my college experience. Wow. And my major [00:14:00] professor said, I just don’t see how you’re going to be able to be an extension agent when you can’t drive. And I thought, you’re telling me now.

Karen: So I went on and , I did the final year of my teaching degree, and I did student teaching. And here I had been this star student and I bombed Student teaching just totally bombed. They almost failed me. And, and it was because of my vision, you know, just my inability to see, to see students and to know what they were doing and just to keep up with it all.

Karen: Well, at the same time, God was working on my heart and leading me into the area of, of considering full-time, mission work. And you know, again, I was just, I was being so unrealistic. I thought, wouldn’t it just be fantastic if God took this visually impaired person and buried her in deepest, darkest Africa?

Karen: And she did great things for him and I realized, oh, so much of the emphasis is [00:15:00] on me. Well, still, I realized, you know, if I’m gonna do that, I need some Bible training. And obviously the home economic stuff that I love is just not working out. So I enrolled to go to seminary. And I met my husband there.

Karen: I recalibrated where I was going and just became a little more, you know, even keel about this and sensible about it all. And just, you know, again, that surrender of, okay, God, you tell me where you want me. And about nine months after Jack and I married somebody walked into our, our school lounge and said.

Karen: I know an editor at the publishing company that’s in Cincinnati, Ohio, that, that the Christian Publishing Company that we all knew. And he said she wants me to rewrite a lesson for one of their curriculum guides, and I just don’t have the time. Would any of the rest of you be interested in it? I just went, that’s what I wanna do.

Karen: And so I said to him, oh, I’ll think about it and let you know tomorrow. [00:16:00] Inside. I’m just going nuts. Because I realized all of God’s plans were coming together. He had given me all this education experience, this writing, experience, this, you know, public service experience.

Karen: And now I had the Bible training. I. And writing was really at the heart of what I wanted to do most, and I wrote that lesson and that Kelly began a 25 year career. Career that let me write from home, let me raise a family, let me work side by side with my husband in ministry in small towns, which were a smaller environ environment that I can deal with.

Karen: And the really. Cool. Bonus points of this whole thing was God took the curriculum that I did for 25 years and sent it overseas for missionaries to use.

Kelly: Wow. That is stunning. I’m just celebrating the redemption story of God right now

And you know, it’s something for us to pay attention to Karen when [00:17:00] God, when we suddenly feel that flame or our spirit jumping up inside of us, like God is igniting a dream that he placed inside of us before we were even born. He appointed you. He is set you apart like it says in Jeremiah one, to to be a writer, to educate people, and he trained you and prepared you.

Kelly: It didn’t unfold how you expected, but it unfolded beautifully. That’s

Karen: why it’s just so important to not get discouraged by those down and discouraging moments. You know, just keep holding on, keep hoping, keep plugging away. Because while we want to look at at life as a series of these individual moments, God is seeing the whole bigger picture of what he has planned for us.

Kelly: Mm-hmm.

Karen: And he is so incredibly adept at taking those little individual whoopsy moments. And repurposing them for his greater pleasure and his greater purposes.

Kelly: So true. Well, now I’d like for you to [00:18:00] help us understand how you came to write the book with fresh eyes. It’s so good.

Karen: Well, you know, by my mid forties, 50, I had become, become content with life as it is. I had become content that my vision is what it is. I also knew that because my eyes are so fragile and underdeveloped, the day could come when I could start having problems due to aging and just.

Karen: Finally those high risk factors that I’d lived with all my life, and some of that started to have happened. I, I developed glaucoma and I’m on permanent drops now for that, but I still realized, it could happen that I could lose more vision. That was just something I quietly learned to trust the Lord that, you know, until that time happens, I’m just gonna continue to use what he’s given me and live the life that he has given me.

Karen: I worried that my vision is so bad that I wondered if I would [00:19:00] even be able to tell if my vision was, was worsening. Well, the day came there, I was just noticing some little anomalies and shifting in my vision. I frankly was scared to say anything to anybody. But finally at my ophthalmology appointment, I sort of dropped it in last moment and my, my doctor in initially said, well, it could be dry eyes.

Karen: You’re that age, but your, your vision is so complicated. Let’s send you to a specialist. Went to the specialist. He discovered a retinal tear that he said was small and frankly had happened some time ago. There was really nothing he could do or wanted to do at that point. Come back in three months.

Karen: We’re gonna just keep checking on this. Well, three months, my vision later, my vision was significantly worse, and so he opted to do surgery, but he said to me. Your vision may get better. Back to the point that it was, it may be no different. It may [00:20:00] be worse. I don’t know. I’m gonna do my best. The night before my surgery, the ladies of my Bible study group at our church gathered to pray for me.

Karen: I’d known these ladies for years. I knew who would pray and who wouldn’t, and I know their hearts were just so beautiful. But that night. Every single one of those 20 women prayed out loud for me. Wow. And I was just amazed at the work that God was doing, that they would, would step up to the plate, put aside their fears and pray.

Karen: That’s how much they longed for this for me. But one woman prayed rather a, an unconventional prayer. She, she prayed, Lord, I pray that you would give Karen better than ever vision. And I thought to myself, honey, that’s not gonna happen. My vision is so complicated. There is such a risk. With this surgery, we’re gonna be good to get back what I’ve lost, that’s gonna be miracle enough for me.

Karen: I was [00:21:00] content.

Kelly: Mm-hmm.

Karen: The next day during the surgery, which was under local anesthesia, the doctor seemed to be taking quite a long time and was asking for some rather. Unexpected procedures, and I thought, what is going on? So about two thirds of the way through the surgery, what he would, what he had been doing was he had seen some damage and unfinished business from those eight childhood surgeries.

Karen: And impulsively, he decided to clean things up without asking me. First he just went and did it.

Kelly: Wow.

Karen: And so , two thirds of the way through the surgery. He said, Mrs. Wingate, I don’t usually like to produ predict these kind of things, but I think I can guarantee that your vision is going to be better than ever.

Karen: Those same words that woman had prayed the night before.

Kelly: Amazing.

Karen: Wow. And so I was laying on that surgical gurney thinking. [00:22:00] What is better than ever look like because I’ve been legally blind all my life. I don’t know what it, that’s like, I didn’t know how much better it was going to be. I wondered what I would be able to see.

Karen: I wondered what would be easier to see, and I wondered if the doctor was just making this up, and most of all, I just worshiped God. That could answer the prayer of a 9-year-old girl years later.

Kelly: Wow. That is beautiful. Well, I know you endured the surgery and the recovery was not at all what you expected.

Kelly: It went on for a very long time. We had to lay face down for two weeks. I don’t know how you managed that, but I know that that was a hard time for you.

Karen: Well, I have a reputation for making a party out of anything. So my husband felt like he needed to keep working. And I really, between the, the surgery was in my better eye, I. And so I say I was, you know, I was blind in one eye and couldn’t see outta the other, and I literally had to be [00:23:00] helped to do anything so I could not be left alone.

Karen: And they, you know, I was allowed up for maybe five minutes per hour to, to do the necessaries. And so, I, before my surgery, I had a whole list of pe of babysitters come to, you know, spend the time with me. And, and my husband tells the story that he was so upset at me because Sunday morning there was about 10 people in our house during church.

Karen: We were, we were praising the Lord and having a good time visiting. So, but no, it, I’m, I’m being too silly. It, it was a hard time. And of course I’m thinking all that time, what am I going to see? Is this going to work? And constructing that bucket list of things that I wanted to see. And of course, as things ended up, my bucket list was so different than what God had planned for me.

Karen: And it was about six weeks before I saw. The first thing that I knew this was real, I really can see better than ever before.

Kelly: Mm-hmm. What was [00:24:00] that thing you saw?

Karen: The bathroom scale.

I had gone into weigh myself because I’m a natural woman and wonder how much weight I’ve gained from laying around on my face for two weeks.

Kelly: Sure.

Karen: So, I knelt down like I usually do on the bathroom scale. And everything was still a blur. So I stood up still on the scale and just sort of gave one little casual look down and I could see the numbers perfectly clear, perfectly.

Kelly: Wow. Amazing.

Karen: And so I, you know, yelled at my husband and ran and told Facebook, and people said, that’s great. Why did that have to be the first thing?

Kelly: The scale with your weight?

Karen: Yeah. You know, why couldn’t it be something normal like leaves on trees or flowers, you know, anything that a third grader with their first pair of glasses can see.

Karen: Yeah. And you know, Kelly, I look back and I think, I think God had a purpose, twofold, purpose for that. First of all. I was in a private room all by myself. It was just him and me, and I had the chance to truly worship once [00:25:00] again, a God who could give sight to a blind woman after 55 years of life. This was real, and he wanted to share that moment with me and me alone so that I could acknowledge to him this came from you

Kelly: Wow. I remember when you were having this surgery and you were kinda struggling with, you know, getting your hopes up and not wanting to be disappointed, and God said to you, I’m, this may not have been when he said this. I’m not done with you yet. Do you remember when God said that to you?

Karen: Oh, yes. That happened actually about. Was it a week before surgery, I’d gotten a call to have a second mammogram, and I thought, oh, my, you know, here I might lose my vision from this surgery. I was told that I’m not being panicky here at all. I mean, this is, this is just the facts.

Karen: This is reality. So I might lose my vision, and then I’m having a redo on my mammogram, and that could be [00:26:00] cancer. And I asked myself the question, how am I gonna do this? A, am I still going to be able to, you know, will I retain my faith in God? Will I keep trusting him as a God who can take care of me and stay with me?

Karen: Can I keep serving him as in the same way? If, if I can’t serve him in the same way, how will my service to him look different? You know? And I really worried, you know, Lord, I wanna stay faithful to you. I want to still have faith. But if the worst happens. Can I do this? And I thought of the Bible story that tells of Daniel and the Lion or not Daniel.

Karen: And the Lions did the three friends that were challenged to bow before Nebuchadnezzar’s statue and they said, we will not do that. We will stay faithful to our God. You know, we’re sure that God could rescue us. We’re confident that God could rescue us, but if not, we will not bow down. And I thought, that’s my battle cry.

Karen: If the worst happens, if God doesn’t heal me from these two things, [00:27:00] I will. I commit myself right now. I will stay faithful Tim. And then in the stillness of that little cubicle, as I waited for the report from the radiologist, I just had this sense that the room was filled with a far bigger presence that the room could not contain.

Karen: Inside my head, I heard the voice, I am not done with you yet.

Kelly: So powerful.

Karen: And two minutes later, the technician knocked on the door and said that my mammogram was clear. And then a week later, I had the surgery. That gave me not worse, but better vision.

Kelly: So amazing. Absolutely stunning. I love the stories.

Kelly: I love your story so much, Karen. I love your commitment to continue to turn to the Lord and the beautiful way he met you in that space where you were just asking honest questions. How can I do this? How can I do this? Like [00:28:00] Mary saying, how can I be pregnant Like I’ve never been with a man. And that’s the kind of question you were asking.

Kelly: You were just like, I don’t understand. How can I do this? But God reminded you of the story of those three young men in Babylon and their commitment to follow God no matter what. God, I know you can. That even if you don’t, we are gonna follow you. Yes. So powerful.

Kelly: So now that you are suddenly realizing you have more vision than you ever have had in your life, tell us about some of your new discoveries. What could you see that you’d never seen before?

Karen: You know, I made the joke about Facebook, but really they became , my stage that I would share almost every day.

Karen: Guess what I saw today? And I also mentioned that I had a bucket list of things I wanted to go see, but God brought the world to me in just , those small everyday things that I had missed out on. And I just had so much catching up to do and, you [00:29:00] know, I just, it was amazing to me.

Karen: What I did notice, like, oh, one day I was pulling clothes out of the clothes dryer and thought, where did I get this blouse? And, it was just this vibrant pink color. And I didn’t remember owning a bra, a blouse that was that bright. But , the whole color spectrum was just so much brighter , and I just became fascinated by God’s creation of color, what a gift.

Karen: And that color trans translated into, what I could see now of sunrises and sunsets. They weren’t just three colors of blurry blobs. It was just these, , a vast array of shades of orange and pinks and yellows and grays , and so much more detail that we’re ever changing.

Karen: Second by second and then one evening we drove out to a friend’s country home, and I saw the Milky Way for the very first time in my life.

Karen: The moon, I had always thought the science books were lying because, you know, they said the [00:30:00] moon was a, you know, changed from a crescent to a full moon and then back to a crescent.

Karen: And to me it just looked like this blurry blob that got bigger than shrunk. Bigger shrunk. And now for the first time I could actually see the curve of the crescent.

Karen: That’s so amazing. And you know, it went so beyond that, and I think this is how the rest of. My friends and acquaintances can join me in this miracle is that it wasn’t just these things that I could see.

Karen: The miracle was then in what God showed me about himself through these new things that I was seeing. And that’s what I tried to express in my book is that you know, God’s creation. Does really declare his glory. It has lessons about who he is. Just waiting for us to discover God’s creation shows his extravagance, his precision, his attention to detail.

Karen: There are so many things like that sunrise, he could have stopped with three [00:31:00] colors, but he didn’t. He could have, created, five different species of beetles. Do you know how many species of beetles there are in the world? Tell us there’s 300,000.

Kelly: Wow. You know what, Karen? It makes me laugh so hard because. When I would have women’s ministry meetings, there would always be the creative people who wanted to design things, and I would think I, this is so not me. Like if I had been on God’s creation committee, I would’ve been like, yeah, one mosquito, that’s enough, one beetle, that’s plenty.

Kelly: Five different kinds of flowers we’re good. Yep. I’m always amazed at the creativity and the different dimensions of God that we see in creation. Yes. One of the things you talk about is, well, you say each blessing gives us , a glimpse of God’s generous, compassionate nature, and his willingness to make you ordinary, you a part of his bigger plan.

Kelly: And so as you were starting to [00:32:00] behold the majesty of God, and you started thinking more about your own life. The lessons God was teaching you, they’re so amazing. I’m just curious how, that impacted you

how do you maintain a tender heart with the Lord, even though you live with the thought that you could lose all the eyesight that you have gained.

Karen: Right. I mean, the doctor corrected just a couple of things in one eye. I still have all those other issues. Shortly after my book was published, I had a glaucoma spike that was really quite scary and sent me to two out front doctors several times a week for the next two weeks.

Karen: And one doctor said. You know, your, eye is so fragile that what that other doctor did was great. I’m so glad you received better vision. But he took a huge risk and this new doctor said, you know, you still could lose what you have gained. , Even a blow to the head could make your whole retina detach.

Kelly: Hmm. [00:33:00]

Karen: And you know, I think just because I have seen God at work in so many incredible ways, that’s the thing that helps me hold onto hope. I know that he’s got this all planned out. He knows , the span of my life. He knows what’s going to happen. He knows when he wants to bring me home. He knows when it’s time for me to change direction.

Karen: His plans are always better than mine. And so if he’s done it before, he certainly will do it again and I can trust him. Do I have my moments of discouragement? Yes, absolutely. My husband is having more and more health issues. I’ve had to take over a lot more household responsibilities. I, I still don’t drive, and so I’m having to find other.

Karen: Other ways to get around besides him. I cannot depend on him like I have. It’s a whole, it, you know, that whole aging process that you go through in your [00:34:00] senior years is just a whole new kettle of fish, so to speak, of learning to trust God all over again. And I have had my, my down moments, but what always brings me back to the Lord’s table is.

Karen: He has been faithful. He does know. He does see, he is aware what’s going through. I’m going through. Others have done this before too. We’re gonna make it through.

Kelly: Mm-hmm. I think of Isaiah 46. I just thought of that this morning and read it in a Bible study where he says, I am God and there is no other. I am God and there’s no one like me.

Kelly: And then he goes on to say, my purposes and plans will be accomplished. Yes. And a comfort that he is sovereign, completely in control. One of the things that you suggest, or one of the things the Lord impressed upon your heart. Is when you wake up in the morning to pretend you were on a scavenger hunt.

Karen: You know, as I said, I first had my bucket list and then it was obvious that God had [00:35:00] his bucket list. And, I tried to dictate to him, , I’d like to see this and this and this, and because his list was so different from mine, I have learned to say, Lord.

Karen: What do you want me to see today?

Karen: These plans are so much better than I, I really learned that even more so in my seeing of people. One of the disadvantages of being legally blind is that you can’t. You can’t see people, you can’t recognize people. I would have to have people just literally in my face for me to recognize them, or, you know, that they would always wear the same coat.

Karen: I had my own little list of how I recognized people and there were times, and I was a minister’s wife. I’m supposed to be friendly to everybody and, and recognize them.

Kelly: Yeah.

Karen: Wasn’t happening. So a lot of times I would pray. I, I mean, desperation led me to pray, Lord. I need to see this person, this person, this person.

Karen: Would you please lead me to them? And God was so gracious, so merciful, because he would lead me to the people that I needed to see. [00:36:00] And that’s how I navigated through writer’s conferences. You know, I can’t read name tags. And so I, I knew the list of editors and agents and other writers, and I’d say, okay, Lord, would you please help me find?

Karen: And that person would just be right there. And finally I thought, man, I am sounding so selfish. I need to pray. Lord, who do you want me to see? Who do you want me to see? I have this list of people, but who do you want me to see today and after , my surgery? You know, I was recognizing people a lot better and I was sort of forgetting, got my need for God to direct my people relationships, but, but it suddenly hit me.

Karen: I still need to pray that prayer every day when I get out of bed. I need to say, Lord, you direct my path. You make me intersect with the people that you want me to meet, whether it’s a store clerk, whether it’s someone at the bus stop, whether it’s a friend on Facebook, or whether it’s just spending all day with my husband.

Karen: Who do you [00:37:00] want me to see and relate with today? And maybe his answer is, you know, Karen, I just want you to spend time with me.

Karen: But it’s just that whole idea of relinquishing my day. To God’s control, to God’s plan book.

Kelly: That’s so helpful. You have offered us so many prayers of surrender to the Lord and prayers that teach us to depend on him in small ways and big ways.

Kelly: Well, I’m wondering as we close, you know, I just think of some of my listeners who are walking through long stories and they’re just struggling to believe that God can do a new thing in their heartache. I’m wondering if you wouldn’t mind just offering a word of encouragement to them as they try to trust God in their what ifs and impossibilities,

Karen: there’s a Bible verse that has meant just so much to me over my journey of the last seven years.

Karen: It’s from Isaiah 42 16. It says, I will lead the blind by ways they have not known along unfamiliar [00:38:00] paths. I will guide them. I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do. I will not forsake them. And you know, I have physical blindness, but all of us walk through unfamiliar paths.

Karen: We don’t, as human beings, we don’t like change because change shows that I don’t know what I’m doing, that I’m weak, that I don’t have my act altogether. And all of us so want to know what the final destination is and we don’t see that. We don’t have it all figured out. And yet, that’s the message that I wanna leave with all of you is that you don’t know, but God does.

Karen: God knows. Your end, God knows what’s gonna be along the path. He knows the snags and the boulders that you’ll encounter, and he is very capable of helping you get all the way home. And I like to call heaven [00:39:00] our true better than ever. He will give you his final gift of better than ever before in heaven’s halls he’ll get you there.

Karen: You just keep trusting him. Keep surrendering to him and he’ll get you all the way home.

Kelly: Oh, Karen, that is so beautiful. I’m so glad I asked you that question. What was the scripture reference? Isaiah 42 16. Okay. Thank you so much. I always put the verses in the show notes

Kelly: that’s so powerful. Oh, I love that. Well, you also have a book, Karen titled Grateful Heart, 60 Reasons to Give Thanks in All Things. And then the book we’ve been talking about. With fresh eyes, 60 insights into the miraculously ordinary from a woman born blind. I highly recommend this book.

Kelly: You’ll hear a lot more of Karen’s story as she just takes you through different Bible verses and truths that God has taught her along the way, and they’re written somewhat like a devotional, short chapters each one. [00:40:00] I’m wondering, Karen, if you could just tell our listeners how they can get in touch with you.

Karen: My website is karen wingate.com. Easy On that website, you’ll find everything you need. You’ll find if you go to the links with books, you’ll find out how you can order my books from the vendor of your choice. I have a blog. I have a speaking page I even have a recipe blog.

Karen: To share recipes that I love to make, to share with other people. You also have an opportunity to see some of my videos and that’s a great place to sign up for my weekly newsletter that comes out every Friday morning. That is just a short devotional thought and lets you know what I’m up to.

Kelly: Well, Karen, thank you so much. What a blessing this has been.

Karen: Thank you, Kelly. Thank you for letting me share and thank you for your questions that have prompted me to think about bigger things.

If you were encouraged in your faith today, it’d be great if you’d help get the word out by subscribing, sharing with a friend, or leaving a review. I’d love to hear from you. You can reach out through my website, kelly hall.org and pick [00:41:00] up some free resources while you’re there. Thanks for listening to the Unshakeable Hope podcast.