Snow Blind


By Phil Scovell




     In mid November of 1964, my mother and I walked out of the
Iowa University hospital.  I was holding on to my mother's arm
because I had just been told by my doctor that I was blind and
would never see again.  My retinas were shredded into thousands of
tiny fragments and after a dozen surgical procedures, including
the laser beam, the latest invention for retinal surgery, I was
told nothing more could be done.  "Is there any hope at all,
doctor?" I heard my mother asking.

     "No," he said softly, "I'm afraid not."

     Now, as we walked into the windy November day, I could feel
the warm sun on my face.  When we got to the parking lot, I well
remember the crunching of the gravel beneath my feet as we walked
to the car.  My mom placed my hand on the door handle.  It was
warm from the sun's rays.  When I heard the click of the door
being unlocked, I punched the button under the handle and climbed
into the passenger's side of the car.  I was blind but didn't know
it yet.  "It would be," I told myself, "just like all the other
times.  I'll go home and after a few days, my sight will come
back.  Oh, it won't be as good as it was," I knew, "but it will
come back.  It always came back.  always."

     Reaching Des Moines a couple of hours later, we stopped at
some friend's home.  They were having church friends over for
supper.  I sat on the couch and listened to my mom as she cried
and told her friends what the doctor had said.  I was numb.  The
words I heard my mother speaking didn't seem to effect me; as if
she were talking about someone I didn't know.  My sight would come
back because it had every time after each operation.  It would
this time too.

     Making one other stop to see mom's best friend, we talked for
awhile and then as we left, the lady gave me her dog.  He was the
father of Corkey, my fox terrier, who had run away after we moved
to Omaha and we never saw again.  I petted my new little dog as he
lay on the seat next to me in his blanket all the way through the
dark night to our new home in Omaha, Nebraska.

     I hadn't gone to the school for the blind yet.  I remembered
my mother talking to the doctor about putting me in a special
school just for blind people but I wouldn't be doing anything like
that because my sight would be coming back.  It always did.

     Ruth and I begged mom to let us go out into the snow.  "But
it's dark out," she protested.

     "We don't care," my little 7 year old sister and I said;
jumping up and down.  "We want to go out and play in the snow.
Besides, the street lights are on."

     "It's really cold out there," mom tried again.

     "So.  We don't mind."

     We were so bundled up went leaving the house, we could hardly
walk.  It was cold, too, but soon we were sliding down the short
hill to the snowy sidewalk below and holding on to the hand rail,
we walked up the steps to achieve the hilltop again.  Mom had
called our neighbors and asked them to turn on their porch light
so the area where we were playing would be illuminated and she
could easily see us from a window.

     It wasn't long after my sister and I began sliding down the
hill that two other little girls from our new neighborhood heard
our laughter and came to investigate.  They asked if they could
slide down the hill with us and we said yes.  For over an hour, we
each took turns sliding down the steep hill.  Sometimes, due to
the deep snow and having gotten turned away sliding down the
hillside, I couldn't find the hand railing and would ask for help.
My little sister, Ruth, helped me find it several times and soon
the two little girls, who had come to play, were helping me find
the hand rail, too, thinking it was just part of the game, I'm
sure.

     It was getting late and it had gotten much colder.  We were
covered with snow and it was in our boots, inside our gloves,
under our hats, and down our necks.  We were getting cold and
tired.

     Sliding down the hill, I couldn't find the hand railing and
asked where it was.  One of the little girls took my gloved hand
and guided it to the iron hand railing.  "Why do you keep asking
us to help you?" she asked innocently.

     Suddenly, I was cold; very cold.  I was wet and tired and
exhausted.  I had only been home from the hospital for a few days.
My sight wasn't slowly returning as it normally had after each of
the other surgeries.

     A couple of days after coming home, I asked my mom for the
book she had been reading to me as I lay on my back in the
hospital.  She gave it to me and I went to my room.  Closing the
door, I switched on a light and held the book in front of me.  I
couldn't see it.  Holding it closer to my eyes, standing as close
to the light as possible, I could tell the cover was red but I
could see nothing else; absolutely nothing.  I knew my sight would
return, though, because it always did.

     During my last stay in the hospital, I had been made to lay
on my back for two full weeks.  They had placed rolls of sand
bags on either side of my head, and they had covered both my eyes
with thick patches.  "Keep your eyes closed, Philip," the doctor
said.  "Try not to move and try to stay as flat as you can.  We
want your retinas to be at rest as much as possible so whatever
you do, don't move your head."

     "But I hate laying on my back," I protested.

     "I understand but it is necessary," he said gently."

     After the surgery, it was another two weeks of laying on my
back, sand bags rolled up on either side of my head to keep me
from turning my head, and patches on my eyes.  When the patches
came off, all I could see was watery light.

     As I stood at the cold iron hand railing, I suddenly felt the
cold of the night rushing in.  It felt as if it had even
penetrated my heart.  Realization sparked to life and everything
became suddenly very still.  It was like the planet slowed to a
stop and a huge spotlight was focused on me.  "Because I'm blind,"
I blurted too loudly, and I burst into uncontrollable sobbing.  My
little sister, Ruth, realized why I was crying and took my arm.
As we both stumbled down the snow covered sidewalk to our home, we
sobbed.  Something in my thoughts seemed to say, "And I'll never
see again."

     Crashing through the front door, the warmth of the house
nearly knocking us over, we cried even louder.  "What's wrong?
What's wrong?" our mother said; hurrying over to the front door to
help us in.  "did somebody get hurt?" she wanted to know.

     My sister and I started immediately pulling wet snowy cold
coats and clothes off.  "It's Philip.  It's Philip," my little
sister stammered through her tears.

     "Philip?" mom said with alarm in her voice.  "What happened?"

     "I'm blind," I sob nearly incoherently, "I'm blind, and I'll
never see again."

     Seated on a plastic lawn chair on the edge of the long
driveway, I listened as my two sighted 4 year old grandsons raced
their tricycles back and forth; complete with their own made up
guttural engine sounds.  By the way, all three of my children see
normally and all of their children see normally.  So rest easy.
Blind people don't always reproduce blind offspring.  My wife, by
the way, is blind, too, so there.

     It was a nice comfortable Colorado day.  Seated just behind
the 5 foot wooden privacy fence, I was shielded from the
brightness of the sun as it slowly crawled westward across the big
sky where it would soon drop behind the Rocky Mountains behind me.

     I was bored.  There wasn't anything to do.  My grandsons were
having fun, though, and it felt good just sitting outside and
listening to them play.  A good 40 years had passed since my
realization of blindness had occurred.  I had been to that memory
many times, even describing it in my autobiography, but now it
didn't hurt or cause me pain as it did that day.

     Listening to the little boys racing around and laughing, I
leaned back in my chair and began to pray.  Much of my prayer time
is in thought only.  I learned a long time ago, prayer is in no
way confined to kneeling, folding your hands, closing your eyes,
and praying by starting, "Oh, God, and great Heavenly Father."
Since being filled with the Spirit in 1982 and receiving the gift
of tongues, I have also learned that speaking in tongues isn't the
only way to pray.  So, as my grandchildren played nearby, I
thought in my mind to God.  That's right.  I allowed my thoughts
to become exchanged with God's.  Which, by the way, is my basic
definition of prayer:  Exchanging our thoughts for God's.

     Moments later, I wasn't getting anywhere.  So I said, in my
thoughts, "Ok, Lord.  You know where I need healing.  What are the
three major areas you want me to focus on for healing."

     The response was immediate.  God said, "Your blindness, sex,
and money."

     "Woe, horse."  I nearly fell off my chair.  I wasn't
expecting anything along those lines but there it was; big as
life.  Finally, once I had recovered some of my composure, I said,
"Ok, Lord, but I doubt I can get all three of those things cleared
up in one day.  So," I said, "let's take them one at a time."  I
suggested we start with the blindness because, frankly, I thought
it was there that the least amount of healing would be required.
After all, I reasoned, I was pretty familiar with most of my
blindness problems.  Yeah, sure, right.

     Leaning back in my chair, I asked the Holy Spirit to search
my life and to bring to my attention anything relating to my
blindness that needed healing.  Three memories suddenly surfaced
in my thoughts.  I carefully looked at each of the three memories
but really felt no pain or discomfort of any kind in any of the
memories.  I decided to take them one at a time and look them over
very closely and pray about how I felt in each memory.

     The first memory I prayerfully examined is the one I have
described in this testimony.  This memory has returned to my
thinking dozens and dozens of times over the 40 plus years I have
been blind.  It has never been particularly painful other than it
was the moment in time I suddenly realized, with harsh reality, I
was really blind and, as the doctor said, I recalled, I'll never
see again.  I told the Lord, in my thoughts as I prayed, that I
didn't see anything wrong with this memory.  Since the memory
often returned, I knew there had to be something I was overlooking
so I prayed and asked the Lord to show me.  I went over each phase
of the memory step by step.  Yet, nothing was apparent.  I even
complained to the Lord.  "Lord," I said, "I don't even feel any
pain in this memory.  So what is wrong with it?"  He did not
answer me that day.  In fact, he did not answer me for many
months.

     One evening, I was conducting a prayer session with someone.
I was trying to explain to them the nature of healing through
intercessory prayer.  I used this very story to explain to them
that I understood how they felt in the situation they were in at
that moment.  As I told the story, just as I told it here, the
Lord said, "There's your lie."  I almost stopped talking in mid
sentence so I could think about it but decided to come back to it
later so I could focus on the memory.

     After that prayer session that night, I sat in my office and
reviewed this experience of coming face to face with my blindness
as a 12 year old boy.  When the little girl took my hand and
placed it on the iron hand railing to the steps, she wanted to
know why I was always asking for help to find it.  When I blurted
out, "Because I am blind," that is all that was spoken aloud.  In
my thoughts, however, whenever I told this story, I finished how I
felt at that very moment.  I did not just feel blind; I felt I
would forever be blind.  That's the implanted lie.  Confessing my
blindness, as painful as it was that first time, hurt a great deal
but I never realized the rest of what was spoken, "And you will
never see again," was not spoken by me.  It was, in fact, as Jesus
said, a lie.  I rejoiced in the truth Jesus spoke.

     Now, about this time, many people are curious.  "So what?"
they say.  "You are blind and you are never going to see again."
Excuse me, but the first part is true and the second part, Jesus
identified as a lie.  I no longer, when telling this story, use
the second phrase because my Lord clearly pointed out the second
half of what I heard in my thoughts was a lie.  In other words, if
I didn't say it, and Jesus didn't say it, who did?  You get only
one guess.

     This immediately singles me out from the Christian crowd who
no longer believes that Jesus does miracles today.  That died out
with the last apostle; whoever he was.  Let me confuse the issue
even further.  To receive my physical sight, I don't need to be
healed; I will need a recreative miracle.  Why?  Both my eyes, for
now, are artificial.  So, I don't need to be healed; I need a
miracle.  "Has Jesus ever performed a recreative miracle?"  John
Chapter 9 would appear to be just such a case.  Of course there
are many others such as the lepers he healed and especially
Lazarus.  You know, the dead man?  Sort of difficult just to heal
somebody who has been dead for a few days without having to
recreate something in the process.  Blood, comes to mind right off
the bat.

     Some may choose to suggest Jesus was referring to His return
and that is when I would receive my physical sight.  If that's
what the Lord meant, that is fine with me.  However, during prayer
times, the Lord has told me more than once things along these
lines.  Again, as I say, if He is referring to His return when all
born again Christians will receive their perfect glorified bodies,
that will be fine with me.  You are welcome to think as you wish.
I, on the other hand, know what Jesus was talking about and I am
thankful He saw fit to heal me in one more place where lies were
believed instead of God's Word.

Phil

I Flew Kites With Jesus
www.SafePlaceFellowship.com