"Show me the right path, O Lord; point out the road for me to follow." - Psalm 25:4
I was 13 years old and traveling with my family to the beach for our summer vacation. The car directly in front of us had a customized license plate, and everyone in our van was trying to guess what all the letters and numbers sounded out. This is when I discovered I had a problem. Not with my family, phonetics, or solving riddles. I couldn't see the letters on the license plate. Everyone in the car could read each individual letter, and I thought they were all joking. They weren't. When we returned home from vacation, I went to the eye doctor and got some glasses. I could see. And my whole world changed. I remember being completely amazed that people had been seeing this clearly all around me every day, while my world had been a relative blur.
The trouble with having vision problems is that most of the time you don't know you can't see until you can see. I thought my eyesight was normal. I was certain that what I was seeing was what all my friends were seeing as well. Boy, was I wrong! Those glasses changed my vision. And they changed my life. Sometimes, life can be the same way. We think we are seeing clearly, but in all reality our vision is blurry. We believe that people are seeing and experiencing the same things we are, but actually their view is completely different.
After I got my vision checked, it made sense why I was having a hard time that season hitting the baseball. Once I put those glasses on, it looked like the pitcher was throwing a beach ball towards the plate instead of pebble. I went from not being able to see the ball to not being able to miss the ball, and all of a sudden I began to have a higher level of success on the field. I have discovered that in life, as well as baseball, success usually follows vision...clear vision!