Saturday Song: Berlin, "Take My Breath Away"

Whenever I hear this song, it brings back all the feelings and experiences to mind from August of 1986. I went to a hospital in the town of Stony Plain to have an operation on my right eye.

What made this operation frightening for me was that it was the only eye I could use to see. My left eye went blind in 1974 so I felt great trepidation about this one also losing sight.

Hear Berlin's song here.

At the time, I attended a house church which insisted that people with enough faith could be healed. Since my eyes never improved during the many prayer sessions, the elders assumed I lacked the faith to receive such a gift from God Almighty.

Consequently, I felt petrified. What if God let me go blind? What would I do for work because my job involved a lot of reading? These and other worries hounded me day and night.

Worse yet, a bubble formed on my retina but the doctor didn't explain what caused it. I feared that my distorted vision would be permanent.

When the doctor told me a week later that the bubble was dissolving, I felt chagrinned. All that worry was for nothing. My eye recovered and I was employed for another nine years at my job.

In all the years at that church, nobody explained about God's providence to me. No matter what happens, our heavenly Father does everything for our eventual good and his glory. That's why Scripture says in 1 Peter 5:7 (KJV)  "Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you."

Did you like the song and what I wrote? Please tell me in the box below. But if you'd rather not comment, have a wonderful weekend anyway.

REMEMBER THE COLD WAR?

Isn't it amazing that there are college students today who weren't even alive during the fall of the Berlin wall. This thought often gives me pause as the ominous tension between America and the Soviet Union was a factor for a large part of my life. Though there has been some political conflict between Russia and the U.S. of late, it can't be compared to the impending threat of nuclear annihilation that we post-war children lived with each day.

My family's home resembled a version of the divided city of Berlin in the summer of 1965. No concrete wall was erected and nobody was shot but the lines were quite literally drawn in our home. From Deliverance From Jericho (Six Years in a Blind School), here is the part where I arrived home after six months at that institution and discovered the sad state my family was in.

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Unbeknownst to me, my parent's marriage relationship had worsened during my stay at Jericho. Mom accused Dad of seeing prostitutes. Meanwhile, Dad claimed that my sister Linda was fathered by another man since she had blue eyes. The tension set everybody on edge as we children dreaded what would happen next.

Home increasingly resembled a miniature version of Cold War Berlin. Suddenly, Mom designated two parts of the kitchen counter for my dad and the rest for us. Half the table was Dad's and the other ours. Mom also assigned him one stove burner, cupboard, some dishes, and fridge space. We never ate dinner together as a family after that time.

Mom moved her belongings into the bedroom where Linda slept and which once belonged to Diane and I. Dad slept alone in the master bedroom. Mom only let him sit in the easy chair in the living room while we used the chesterfield. Since life became extremely uncomfortable at home, Dad spent increasing amounts of time at the bar with his friends.

My parents rarely spoke to each other unless it was absolutely necessary. Mom ordered us not to talk to Dad, Whenever we disobeyed, she would interrogate us regarding what he said and what we told him. I hated being forced to take sides.

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Though modern marriages fail frequently, it's still traumatic for the children. I can remember longing for a "real dad" who would stay home from the bar to play games with me and my siblings. Complicating matters was my poor vision and my brother's behaviour problem. Getting a divorce was much more difficult back then so my parents kept up their "cold war" until 1976 when Mom got a separation.

Though my memoir deals mainly with being at Jericho Hill School for the Deaf and Blind, I included vignettes of the times I spent at home during Christmas, summer, and three Easter vacations. The book is available by clicking here. I also have a short bio and When a Man Loves a Rabbit (Learning and Living With Bunnies) featured on the site.