Not only couldn’t I read the vision charts, but my vision was getting a hazy feel to it, and I couldn’t read a street sign unless I was right on top of it, which isn’t helpful at 45mph. At home, I kept buying stronger readers for when I wasn’t wearing my contacts. It was time.
Let me interject with an eye doctor joke.
How many optometrists does it take to change a lightbulb? Is it one…or two? One…or two?
Getting cataracts removed is a very odd procedure and I wouldn’t recommend it for a fun afternoon, but it wasn’t horrible at all. I did it first for the right eye, the worst one, and came home not having any idea how it would feel or what would be different. They said I could read, work on the computer, or some other non-strenuous activity. I sat down at the computer to do some non-strenuous bookkeeping, and just casually glanced out the window of our office.
My eyes got very big and I literally stood up. My husband was in the room at his computer, and he said, “Are you ok?”
I said, “Oh, my gosh, look outside!” I was seeing amazing color for the first time in years. Astounding color, deep and bright blues and greens of water and trees, the pinks and yellows of the flowers and even the white of the trim on the house. It was so incredibly different – so unlike how I had been seeing for so long. My husband later said I looked like one of the kids online that gets hearing aids for the first time, or when colorblind people get glasses that let them finally see color. I got teary with the change – I had no idea how compromised my sight was until it got fixed.
The next 2 weeks were fun – I had one good eye and one bad one and spent a lot of time squinting with one or the other and comparing how different the color was.
I had no idea I was seeing everything through a yellowish haze until it was removed. I am so very grateful for the change, a change I didn’t even really know I needed. I knew the procedures would help my eyesight – I now only need mild readers for some smaller-print books – but I didn’t know it would improve my color sight so much. It was such an important bonus, but such a complete surprise. I don’t fully appreciate it now as much as those first 2 weeks as I don’t have the comparison, but I remember.
The charities we support have huge missions and goals for their recipients. They provide housing, advocacy, and mentors and food. The initial benefit is obvious and amazing – a stable place to live, a knowledgeable person to come to court with them, a person to teach them what they don’t know, and food for meals.
What they might not know until they have these things are the ancillary benefits and the removal of trouble they didn’t know would help so much until it did.
Stable housing also means safety and the ability to sleep through the night without fear.
Advocacy means sharing stress in a situation where that particular tension has been theirs to do all alone.
A mentor can also become a treasured person in someone’s life, bringing not just wisdom, but concern where there has been a lack of care and compassoion.
Being provided with food frees up money to pay for other things, like utilities and gas, with much less struggle.
These are the extras, the color that we can help provide with our giving to these organizations. The obvious benefits are reason enough to give – the bonus benefits are the cherry on top, for both the recipients of their care and for us, the givers.
When we pool our resources at $100 each quarterly (and extra for the runners-up fund – love that thing), we equip organizations with a passion to help in their particular way the means to do just that; provide not just the basics – food, shelter, compassionate care – but color to the lives of the people they serve. The food can allow for their child’s allergies, the shelter accepts the family dog that continues to be a comfort to them all, and the bag of goodies received in a cancer unit for a child hand-picked just for them.
That we get to be a part of this is a blessing. Please join us at one of our meetings and feel what it’s like to know the money we give goes straight into the hands of people that will use it to bring care, safety, and color to the lives of the people they serve.
As always, we don’t have to do this. We get to do this.
Contributed by Shannon Plate