Lessons from a Blind Man, Part 2

Eric Davidson was a toddler, standing at the window playing with a toy on the windowsill during the 1917 Halifax explosion. The glass exploded, blinding Eric. Shattered glass and flying debris stole sight from more than 1,000 residents that day. The mass blinding helped birth the CNIB. A memorial park in Halifax is named for this amazing man who worked as a sightless mechanic for decades. His daughter, Marilyn Davidson Elliott, wrote the book The Blind Mechanic about her father and it’s become a favorite of my blind friend, Gene McKenzie.

Lots of other great books about the blind and their accomplishments have inspired Gene, like Thunder Dog: The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust by Michael Hingson. The author and his guide dog, Roselle, became famous after they escaped the seventy-eighth floor of the World Trade Center on 9/11. Hingson refers to sighted people as “light dependent” and says, “Blindness doesn’t mean the end of the world. With technology and education, blindness can be reduced from an all-consuming disability to just another human limitation, of which there are many. There is more to life than eye function.”

I asked Gene if he’d considered learning Braille, but he said not at his age. With technology making it easier for the blind to listen to books and to have internet content read aloud by your computer, we discussed whether Braille might go the way of Morse code. A Braille Bible occupies more than eight feet of bookshelf, while the entire audio Bible fits on your phone.

“Apple has developed software which lets me touch my computer screen and it tells me which icon I’m touching, so I can find my way around,” Gene says. “Filling out forms online is tricky, and I need help. I still have enough peripheral vision to move around my home, but it’s the details I can’t see. I can tell there’s a picture on the wall, but I can’t tell you what it is. It’s been three years since I’ve seen a picture.”

Gene’s optometrist tells him he will likely hang onto at least some of his peripheral vision, for which he’s grateful. “Depth perception is flawed, but my white cane helps. The trick, in a crowd, is if a child darts out suddenly in front of me.”

Gene with his daughter, Val

Gene enjoys the questions of children who can be uninhibited in their curiosity. One boy wanted to know, “How do you cross the street? Those new electric cars are pretty quiet. You need to be careful!”

Gene’s love for children and youth is obvious. As a pastor and PMU rancher, he spent 21 summers running Beracah Valley Ranch Camp. You can still hear the passion in his voice when he tells about it. “I believe this gave our own kids a vision for ministry and what Christian relationships are all about.”

I asked Gene what he misses the most. “My ability to study,” he said with little hesitation. “I can listen to everything on audio, but you can’t stop and find that last paragraph easily. I used to remember names. Now I realize I’d been tying names to faces. They say you learn to hear better when you lose your sight. That may be true if it happens when you’re young, but my hearing is not keen enough. Often I can’t distinguish between voices. Listening requires a lot of energy and can be exhausting.”

When asked if he’s tempted to feel sorry for himself, Gene admitted to moments when he feels his world pressing in on him and he wonders “what did I do to deserve this?” But those times are few and far between.

“This has not harmed my faith in any way,” he says. “I am genuinely thrilled when I hear of other people receiving healing. Certainly, I question why it doesn’t happen for me, but I always fall back on Paul’s words in II Corinthians 12: ‘Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”’”

Healing is not always sufficient. God’s grace always is.

Next week I’ll share with you what Gene looks forward to most.