Last month, right around my birthday, I started having difficulty reading. I thought maybe it was due to various medications I was taking at the time because I am still too young to need reading glasses! I should have another 5 years before that! After I stopped taking the medications my eyesight improved slightly. However, words were still swimming and I couldn’t read for very long without really working at it and getting a headache.
So, being the good husband he is my hubby took me off to the eye doctor. That was new. They run various tests on your eyes, take you to a dimly light room, and then put drops into your eyes to dilate them. When the burning sensation stopped the dimly lit room was very bright and anything closer than my fingertips was blurry. Then you read some letters and numbers off a chart on the far wall. After that they stick another chart right in front of your face. I was fine until the last two letters of the close chart that I couldn’t tell what they were. And, my right eye was worse than my left!
“Yes, you need reading glasses.” the Doctor proclaimed, “Just barely, but you need them.” He hands me a plastic and paper set of shades and sends me off into the front show room to pick out a pair of frames. Did I mention that my eyes are dilated and anything closer than my fingertips started to blur? Or, that the dimly lit back room was very bright on my poor eyeballs? I’m blinded by the sunlight coming in from the floor to ceiling windows and skylights and have to look at frames from far away and pick the shapes I like. We managed to pick out a pair that I liked. They were not in the selection of frames that were included with the first time customer deal, but were only one area up and not that much more.
Once they got my prescriptions (one for the left and one for the right) into my new frames I was sent home to adjust to wearing glasses for reading. My first day of wearing them was the next day at church. All of the ladies reassured me they looked just fine and we talked about when they had to start wearing glasses. I discovered I had to put my glasses on to read my Bible and the Hymns clearly and easily, but take them off to see the Pastor up at the pulpit. I realized this on again off again with the glasses is going to be part of my life from now on. I was not very happy about it.
At one point during the service I was sitting there wearing my new glasses reading my Bible and I glance over at my husband who was looking at me. Still being somewhat self-conscious wearing them I later asked him about that moment and he said the sweetest thing about our 17 years of marriage and growing older together. (Is it any wonder why I love that man like crazy?)
It made me realize my glasses are just one more thing about getting older. Another step that people take. Perhaps it’s a bit sooner than I would have liked it, but is one ever really ready to grow older? I’ve said I want to age gracefully and accept what comes: No hair dyeing. No botox. No overly excessive applications with creams and lotions. No lieing about my age. No obsessing that I maintain the weight I was when I was in my teens and twenties. No clinging to a youthful appearance that is fading, but instead accepting with grace that we all grow older and that these things just are what they are.
Choosing to look at the Pros of my new Fashion Statement: My glasses allow me to once more read my Bible and Devotionals as well as reading for entertainment. I look good in my glasses. I can make and wear pretty jewelry to hang my glasses from when I have to switch back and forth between needing them and not needing them. My glasses have reminded me that every day I grow older and HOPEFULLY wiser. If not actually wiser, than at least maybe I’ll LOOK wiser for wearing them. 😉
