About a year and a half ago I shared an article here titled ’Walking in the Light’ (Nov 16, 2022). In it I mused about walking along the sidewalk in the morning sun, eyes completely shut, absorbing the sunshine and trusting in the Lord’s guidance, basking in His love and wisdom. Ahh, that was an idyllic time! Those walks were so nice, and the insights were even more delightful.

I’ve been ‘walking in the light’ pretty much every day since then, too – literally, engaging in that practice of walking with my eyes shut on that stretch of sidewalk. It’s been nice, peaceful, uneventful,……….

……That is, until I walked smack into a telephone pole, on a morning walk one week before Christmas 2023! 😮

No joke. I hit that thing hard, too: I wasn’t going very fast (I was walking with my eyes shut, after all; I may be dumb, but I’m not that dumb!), and I feel like I briefly felt the pole with my hands – I didn’t hold them up in front of me, they were just casually hanging by my side, but somehow I think I touched the pole in front of me with my hands? I mentally acknowledged that there was a telephone pole there,.. and yet apparently this message didn’t make it as far as the rest of my body, because my forehead hit that telephone pole with a mighty whack! I took a step back and kind of shook it off, chuckling at myself (in part for the benefit of any onlookers 😬 – of which I don’t think there were any, but just in case..), but even as I walked the remaining 5 minutes – not even?! – to my house, I could see the welt ballooning over my left eye, beginning to obstruct my vision. I applied arnica cream as soon as I got home (after taking some pictures, for posterity’s sake, y’know), and the goose egg actually did subside as the day wore on! ….I didn’t think to apply the cream around my eye, however, and I didn’t anticipate the blood sinking down and pooling around my eye socket,…. I don’t know if it would’ve made a difference, if I’d slathered it with cream, but I ended up with a black eye. 🙄 Even now, nearly two months later (at the time of writing), there’s no lingering outward sign of trauma – thankfully! – but I can still feel slight tenderness and a bit of a lump over my left eyebrow.

I’m not telling you all this hoping for an outpouring of sympathy, I just thought it would be a fun update – and an opportunity to reflect on what lessons we might learn from it.

Well, for starters, the quick lesson that was forced upon me pertained to vanity. I am a birth & postpartum doula, and when I am first in contact with potential clients, I meet with them in person for a no-obligation meet-and-greet; it goes both ways, we interview each other to see whether we feel like a good fit. As I’m still finding my feet in this business, I don’t have many interviews in a year, but wouldn’t you know it, I had an interview scheduled for that very afternoon. Of all days! 🙄 This was one of the first thoughts through my mind, after I knocked my noggin: should I reschedule?? (Clearly I wasn’t too badly injured; I wasn’t thinking about going to the hospital or any such thing!) Just as quickly as that thought entered, though, I had the conviction that, no, I shouldn’t. The only reason for rescheduling would be not wanting to show up to an interview with a black eye, and that would be sheer vanity. I went to that interview, and I did feel self-conscious; I acknowledged the blackening eye to the prospective parents right off the bat, keen to address the elephant in the room and not wanting them to be distracted or worry about me. (They didn’t seem very phased about it at all, actually. They didn’t hire me, in the end, but I don’t think the black eye had anything to do with it.) (P.S. Handy life hack: wearing eye glasses distracts observers from black eyes! 😉 My contact lenses stayed tucked away in their case for about a week….)

Skeptics might chuckle over this mishap and retort, “See?! It didn’t work! You put your blind faith in the Lord, and you got hurt. He betrayed you!” Ah, but did it not? I’m entirely confident that the Lord didn’t betray me. He is a loving God – everyone, everywhere, all the time; He is neither fickle nor mean; He didn’t betray me, period. I did put my faith in Him, albeit simply in the matter of walking down the sidewalk – and I received a lesson, perhaps, in trusting that all will be well, whatever happens along the way.

Had I grown too comfortable, walking blindly (essentially) down the street? Had I, correspondentially, grown too comfortable in my faith? Was I being careless about what the Lord was telling/showing/providing me? Was I taking His gifts for granted? Was I acting blindly? What does ‘acting blindly’ even mean?

“Love without the intellect, or an affection of love without the thought of the intellect, is incapable of any sensation or action in the body, and this because love without the intellect is as though blind, or because affection without thought is as though in thick darkness. For the light of the intellect is the light by which love sees. The wisdom of the intellect also springs from the light which emanates from the Lord as a sun.” [Divine Love and Wisdom #406, emphasis added]

Oooh! Was I loving without using my intellect? Was I letting my heart lead and ignoring reason? Was I loving indiscriminately?? ..I wish I’d paused to reflect on this question closer to the time of my mishap, because, frankly, I don’t know; I don’t remember any particularly indiscriminately- loving experiences in my life around that time. I wish I could rewind the clock and revisit the ensuing days so that I could consciously consider the question! (That right there is a lesson in carpe-ing the diem and examining my inner life more closely, more regularly; add those to the list!)

…..Or…. maybe I just walked into a telephone pole?😉