Exposing an Embarrassing Lie


By Phil Scovell






 It was a new school, for me at least, but nothing like the one to which I 
had been
accustom.  That school was nearly 50 miles south of my home in a small town 
of about
8,000 populations.  The school was often called by others, "The Blind 
School," but it's
full name, back then was, "The Nebraska School for the Blind and Visually
Handicapped."  We all hated the name but even as students, we often called 
our school,
"The Blind School," just for fun and to aggravate others.  Why?  Because 
someone
always insisted upon pointing out that the school wasn't blind; we, the 
students were.

 The Nebraska school for the blind, back in the 1960s was a fairly newly 
built
facility but it only had, at that time, about 75 students from kindergarten 
through high
school.  Its campus was sizable.  It had it's own apple orchard.  It had 
lots of wide open
spaces for outdoor games, complete with swing sets for kids of all ages and 
sizes, teeter
totters, jungle gyms, and sidewalks to follow just for strolling around the 
campus, as well
as trees to climb.  Climbing trees in the orchard to find good sweet apples 
to eat, and
climbing just for fun, was restricted to the opposite side of the two 
buildings, the main
school building and the dormitories, which were separated by about a 75 foot 
breezeway.
This tree climbing strategy was employed so we would not be seen by 
housefathers and
housemothers who didn't believe that blind kids should be climbing trees 
and, if they
would have known we were thieving our own apples right off the trees, we all 
would
have been in big trouble.  The only reason we climbed the apple trees is 
because we had
learned, via the grapevine, sort of speak, that the school harvested the 
apples, sorted
them, and the good, unblemished, and best looking apples were sold.  On the 
other hand,
the blind kids, that meant us, got the remainder of the sort; the least 
desirable apples, that
is.  The left overs.  So we debased ourselves, as poor helpless blind kids, 
to gathering our
own apples when we were hungry and were out of sight by the houseparents in 
the distant
dorms across the campus.  This was the school in which I was enrolled 
December 7, 1964
when I was just 11 years of age after more than a dozen unsuccessful 
surgeries on my
retinas; ending in total blindness.  I quickly made friends, however, and 
within days, the
school for the blind felt non-threatening and safe.  That came to an end 
three and a half
years later when I left for public high school.

 The pilot program employed was the matriculation of blind students back 
into
public school at eventually all grade levels.  Some states have now, over 
the years, closed
the schools for the blind as a result of this program.  I was the first high 
school student to
try out this program In Nebraska.  The program germinated for one good 
reason.  First,
many schools for the blind were sending senior high students downtown to a 
local public
high school for a few classes.  This was, reportedly, to give the blind 
student a feel for
what college would be like.  I, on the other hand, figured, 'Why not stay at 
home where I
live and attend all high school classes in a public school,' and thus the 
experiment began
with me as the guinea pig.  Me and my big mouth.

 I spent less than a week learning my way around the floors and hallways of 
the
public high school which would be opening its doors for the fall semesters 
the following
week.  The 3-story building, with its basement, was easy to learn even if it 
did take up a
complete city block.  Finding some of my classrooms, and my private study 
hall would
prove to be difficult regardless of the ease I found the layout of the 
building to be.

 It was the second day of being in a public high school, traveling through 
the maze
of hall ways and rooms on a total of 4 levels, including the basement, that 
it happened.

 The first day was quite simple.  One of the sighted people running the 
program
assisted me as I was introduced to each individual class of my first day of 
school.  Mary
Ann and I demonstrated how a blind person walked with a sighted person by 
holding on
to the arm at elbow level.  Volunteer readers were likewise solicited from 
each class
because many of my books were not available in Braille or as audio sources, 
so
volunteers would be needed as readers.  So, although that first day in a 
school built for
1500 students but had enrolled 2600 students, was stressful, it was the next 
day I would
be totally on my own.

 Being allowed to leave each class a couple of minutes before the next class 
began,
gave me, usually, ample time, if I fast walked, to arrive before the bell 
rang, announcing
class change.  Getting caught in the see of closely packed moving bodies was 
something
that would have caused me more problems in locating the next classroom.

 The second day of school, I was trying to find the library door.  Not the 
student's
entrance door to the library, but a secondary door for the librarians.  It 
was in their office,
where an extra desk was set aside for my Braille writing and recording 
equipment and a
place where my readers could come and read assignments, exams, or eat lunch 
with me.
This door was particularly difficult to find because it was a door which 
butted right up
against an in cession classroom.  From my prior class to my study hall room, 
I had
walked about 200 feet, passing closed doors to classes, offices, and other 
rooms, plus,
intersections of other offshoots to other rows of classrooms in-cession.  I 
knew the bell
was going to ring any second so there was no time to waist in finding that 
door to the
library.  If the halls filled with students before I made it through that 
door, I likely
wouldn't find it at all due to the human flow of thousands of moving bodies 
pushing and
shoving their way to their next class.  Crossing the empty hall, my cane 
touched the door
frame.  I didn't check to see if it were the right-hand door or the left. 
The left was a class
room and the right was the library private entrance I wanted.  After two 
steppes into the
wrong room, I recognized my fatal mistake but it was too late.  I found 
myself standing at
the front of a classroom filled with 35 to 40 students all looking at the 
new blind guy in
their school.  'What was he doing in here?' I knew someone was thinking 
about this time.
I, still not 100 percent sure I was in the right, or wrong place, heard 
someone coming
towards me so I said, 'Hello,' hoping it was one of the librarians to whom I 
had already
been introduced the day before.  It wasn't; it was the class's teacher.

 "May I help you?" the teacher asked.

 "I explained I apparently misjudged the location of the library door.  She 
was
pleasant and told me it was one foot over so to turn left when I left the 
room and that
would be the door I wanted.  I thanked her, tried to exit as quietly as 
possible, feeling
incredibly dumb, and easily making it into the private library entrance 
without further
mishap.

 I have been healed in many places that all contained the same theme of
"embarrassment," relating to my blindness so I knew, when this memory 
recently popped
up, it was very likely Jesus was trying to indicate this was another memory, 
with another
lie, of which He wanted me to be healed, so this time, I said in just my 
thoughts, without
ever moving my lips, "Lord, I know I was horribly embarrassed in this event 
but it was
just a mistake, and accident, and it couldn't really have a lie embedded in 
it.  It could have
happened to any blind guy"

 "How did you feel?" I could hear the Holy Spirit asking.

 I quickly reviewed, in my thoughts, all the psychological obvious: 
Rejection,
perhaps shame, dumbness, stupidity, helplessness, etc.  None of those 
negatives,
however, felt right to me.  In short, I couldn't see it in my mind or 
emotions and told the
Lord as much.

 "How did you feel?" I heard the voice of the Lord once again gently ask.

 Focusing firmly upon the old memory, as if I were actually back there, 15 
years of
age and a junior in high school, I said the first thing that came to my 
mind,  "I felt like an
idiot."

 It was what happened next that revealed the lie.  Almost overlapping what I 
said, I
spoke a second sentence which was, "No, I WAS an idiot."  The word W-A-S 
enunciated
louder than the other words in the followup sentence, and in such a manner 
that it felt it
was attempting to punch through to supersede, or otherwise dominate, the 
first sentence I
had spoken in my mind.

 I instantly, and automatically, mentally and spiritually, identified the 
exposure of
the second statement as an attempt at implanting a lie.  First, it came so 
quickly, it almost,
as previously stated, overlapped the last word of the first spoken sentence 
about how I
felt, which was, "I felt like an idiot."  Need I point out that feeling like 
an idiot and being
an idiot, are two totally different concepts?  Try keeping it all in context 
as you think
about what I am explaining.

 This event occurred the second day of public high school, which was my 
junior
year, following attending the school for the blind three and a half years, 
and finishing my
sophomore year at the school for the blind.  At the moment of this 
experience, my life
had gone from one of simplicity, comfort, close friendships, some which 
would last for
many decades, and ease of living, all due to living within a closed 
environment.  I was an
active member of the wrestling and track teams the school for the blind 
offered.  and As
far as my personal blindness was concerned, I felt that I lived in a 
non-threatening
situation and therefore my blindness was never challenged beyond current 
demands of
learning Braille, as well as, learning some mobility skills with a white 
cane, and other
related blind techniques needed to simply function normally.  All those 
around me,
looking at it from another standpoint, were in the same shape I was in, that 
is, blind.  So I
had others from which to learn by simply asking how they did things. 
Furthermore, I had
seen for nearly the first 12 years of my life and that helped.  As far as my 
blindness was
concerned, those three and a half years.  Now, no longer existed.  I felt I 
needed to
function as normally as possible in a sighted world.  In fact, in a manner 
of speaking,
rehabilitation services taught the blind to function exactly in this manner. 
Of course, we
learn communication skills and how to study from volunteer readers, and many 
other
such methodologies needed in order to live "normal" lives; yet still blind. 
This
philosophy alone, when shoved back into a total sighted societal 
environment, blew the
stress gage into the red, if not off the scale all together, and stress 
effects on teenagers
and the young back then were not even realized to play a dynamic in their 
daily lives.
Walking, therefore, by mistake into that class room and realizing I was now 
suddenly
spotlighted, made me feel "blind," as never before.  The Enemy supplied the 
rest, that is,
the lie spoke into my thoughts and feelings placed into my emotions to keep 
me trapped
in the moment of that embarrassment for the rest of my life.

 As I write this, I am approaching my 58th birthday.  Although it was more 
than 40
years after the event, this embarrassing moment had spiritual and 
psychological
woundedness, concerning my blindness, still buried deep within the incident 
of the literal
event,.

 As I mentioned, my first indication of the second sentence, "No, I am an 
idiot,"
was instantly recognizable as a lie because it rushed hurriedly, way too 
quickly, into my
thoughts and almost over talked the first sentence I spoke in answer to the 
question posed
by the Holy Spirit: "How did it make you feel."

 The second indicator of this demonic utterance was that I knew God didn't
consider me to be an idiot of any kind for any reason.

 The third evidence was the spiritual awareness the Holy Spirit gave me by
highlighting the second statement as being spoken in the first person, (I.E. 
No, 'I was' an
idiot).  Due to my present relationship with the Lord through the ministry 
of the Holy
Spirit, I instantly recognized a lying spirit was attempting to disguise the 
lie by uttering it
in the first person, as well as emotionally reinforcing the lie with the 
strong emotional
feelings of embarrassment at the same time the lie was spoken.  I nearly 
laughed when I
realized the truth of the entire situation.  Actually, I heard the truth as 
only the Lord can
speak it.

 In the memory picture held in my mind, I felt around emotionally within the 
event
to try and identify the answer of how I felt when asked by the Holy Spirit, 
"How did you
feel?"  Once I recognized the lie for what it was, I saw a figure of Jesus, 
arms folded,
standing behind all the students seated in their chairs.  I saw what Jesus 
was thinking as if
it were written on his face.  It was as if He were saying, "This is one of 
mine.  Don't
anybody say or think anything about what you just saw."  This memory, 
therefore, is
forever changed.  Does it return?  Of course, and it always will.  Now, 
first of all, when I
see myself in the memory picture, there is no embarrassment, and number two, 
I always
see Jesus, arms folded, with that stern look on his face, standing behind 
all the other
students protecting/guarding me from what they might have been thinking. 
This is
known Biblically as the renewing of the mind.

 You need not be blind for such an occurrence to be experienced in your 
life.  It
may have been last week, last month, or, as in my case, over 40 years ago. 
Is it really
important that such memories be processed in order to experience the 
renewing of the
mind the Bible so clearly talks about?  Wherever there is brokenness or 
woundedness,
there is room for a lie to have been implanted.  Do you prefer living your 
life with such
demonically implanted lies maintaining a foothold, or stronghold, in your 
life and
tampering with your relationship with Christ?  Would you rather be free, 
with a clear
mind, in order to spiritually join in fellowship with the true Lord Jesus 
Christ through the
ministry of the Holy Spirit?

It Sounds Like God To Me
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