500 peppercorns

This is a post for those who may look at this blog and mistakenly come to the conclusion that Liz Tate has a pretty awesome life.

Granted, I have gotten to do some pretty amazing things in the past couple of years, but they're mixed with their hardships. For now, I'm sitting smack dab in the middle of one.

As I write, I'm currently sitting at my kitchen table eating my lunch. My lunch was supposed to be a burrito bowl of chicken and black beans over quinoa, but has turned into something I like to call "500 pepper crunch burrito bowl."

Let me back up a bit....

Last Thursday, during my last half hour of working, the baby I watch just so happened to reach back and poke my eye while I was holding her.

I am not the kind of person who will go to the doctors if I can help it, so I tried to forget about it, hoping the pain would be gone when I woke up the following day. Unfortunately, it was worse, so my sister-in-law sent over some eye drops that were left over from her lasik surgery.

My parents were in town for the weekend, and trying to be helpful, my dad offered to put the drops in my eye... only he grabbed a bottle that wasn't eye drops.

On top of the scratches to my cornea, I also got a lovely dose of Maximum strength Grapefruit Seed Extract, which is basically a very concentrated form of pure acid.

So much for Liz not wanting to see a doctor. In the past 5 days I have seen 2 different specialists on 3 different occasions, and have 2 more appointments lined up for the rest of the week.

According to my charts, I have an 8 mm lesion with chemical burns. I'm currently blind in the one eye and so far, there has been very little healing. Just a little bit healing to say the least.

A few weeks ago, I prayed about it, and felt God calling me to go on a mission trip this summer. After carefully planning out how I would pay for the trip (and bills back home as I am away for 2 months), I agreed to go on the trip. As soon as I said yes, my car broke down which cost a whopping $550.  It was a minor setback, but I know that God has plans, so I continued planning for the trip. Next, I got the news that my job would be ending 5 weeks earlier than I thought. That got me down for a couple of days, but I thought, "I'll find something, it'll all work out." As soon as I had peace about the finances again, then everything happened with my eye. Not only am I paying to eye specialists and the medication, but it also has meant that I can't work.

I've been trying not to pity myself, as I stumble blindly around the kitchen attempting to make my lunch. just as I was adding some fresh ground pepper to eat my burrito bowl, the cap broke and EVERY-SINGLE-PEPPERCORN ended up in my bowl. My eyesight's so fuzzy that I couldn't tell a peppercorn from a black bean. So after scraping off the top layer, I've resigned to my crunchy, spicy, lunch.

I hope I can someday sit back and laugh at it all and point to the ways that God was using these things to grow me, but in the moment, nothing's funny.

I want to be able to see His hand in my life. To not become defeated with I am faced with hard times, but to be honest, it's difficult.

Maybe I'm so focused on wanting to see how God's working in my life right now, that I've forgotten that he asks me to trust him. And for that, I have to follow him blindly.