Eyes of Your Heart

These past three days of visiting Michael have been really good ones.  One thing that I’ve really enjoyed is being able to see Michael with his glasses again.  I always complement him and am happy because I think it must be helping him to be able to see a bit better now that he has them.

When Michael wasn’t wearing his glasses, he always did this thing that Jeremy affectionately referred to as the “Einfeldt stare.”  It was this kind of eye squinting, nose wrinkling expression and it was pretty awesome.

Jeremy called it the “Einfeldt stare” because it was something that both Michael and Sarah would do.  Usually it was whenever they would come into Youth Group without their regular glasses.  It was always quite an endearing thing and something that we referred to a few times during today’s visit.

That being said, it’s been good to see Michael with his glasses on again.  When he wore his glasses he always looked so nice.  Though I should admit that since Michael was always “all in” with the games that we’d play in Youth Group, often times his glasses would be seen more flying off his face than on his face.  He’d then have to stop whatever he was doing to fix them, but never seemed to mind too much since he was having too much fun with whatever he was doing to care.

Knowing that I would write about Michael and his glasses tonight, I searched for and found a cool verse to share that had to do with eyes.  And when I read what I had highlighted in my Bible after this particular verse, I knew for sure that it was something full of powerful truth and a great encouragement for the night.

You see, in Ephesians 1:18, Paul writes to his friends in Ephesus that he prayed that “The eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which you were He has called you.”  And that in itself is a beautiful truth.  Observing hope is one thing.  But knowing and experiencing and living hope is something quite different.  I think that in many ways, it’s how I’ve processed everything that Michael is going through.  Amidst the ups and downs of this journey, my constant has been the hope that I have that God will heal and restore and work His perfect plan.

But if you look a bit further after this verse?  Pure gold.

In verse 19, it goes on to say that Paul also prayed that they would know God’s “incomparably great power” that is something for us who believe in and follow Him.  It’s a pretty cool thing to know that when we have a real and personal relationship with God, He gives us His power.  It’s something that we have in us.  And reading on, it says that that power that we have is the same power that God used when he raised Jesus from the dead.

Now I’m not sure about you, but I’m guessing that a power like that is a pretty incredible power to have and one that we could use to help us to do great things.

As I’ve shared before, Michael had a beautiful and true and personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.  Loving Jesus and having a relationship with Him is as simple as believing that Jesus was who He said He was (God’s son)  and that He did what He said He did (died for our sins and was raised from the dead).  All we have to do is confess our sins and ask for Jesus to forgive them and believe and we can have a real and true and personal relationship with God, just like Michael did.

And I share that tonight, because I know that it’s something that Michael would want for everyone that he knows and loves.  And I pray that even as you read these words that this is something that you have in your life too.

As I mentioned before, Jeremy and I drove up to see Michael and even got to bring our amazing friend Lisa Anderson with us today.  The three of us had a wonderful visit with Michael.  His eyes were open and he did an awesome job looking around a bit at all of us as we stood around his special hospital chair today.  I held his hands again and smiled when I realized that again he had both hands together as though he was holding mine right back.  I told him how many people love him and are praying for him every day and he responded with hand and arm movements as he tends to do when I tell him these things.

So we continue to praise God for these blessings and for the great things he is doing.  Please keep Michael in your prayers.  As he heads into the weekend, he will come off an antibiotic and that will hopefully show that he is ready to have his shunt surgery.  We continue to pray for God’s timing and his hand in all of this.