Painting the Blind Girl's Nails

Recently I had the pleasure of being pushed out of my comfort zone. An East Coast trip with two of my brothers ended in the Bronx where we spent two days with a family, the daughter of which was blind. It was my first extended experience with a disabled person.

I entered their home with all these preconceived notions about the life of a visually-impaired person, most which came from movies. I wondered if her eyes would be clouded over and if her other senses were so acute that she could karate-chop a person sneaking up on her. I wondered if she would want to feel my face to know what I looked like. I wondered if she would be docile and helpless, assisted in every aspect of life.

Crystal turned out to be none of these. She greeted us at the door and held out her hand. Adopted from China at eight, Crystal was a few months younger than I, but looked about thirteen. Her eyes weren’t clouded over; rather they moved of their own accord, back and forth, and in arcs, generally in the direction of the speaker where she tuned in with her ear.

I was her guide touring New York City. She took my arm and passed her walking stick across the pavement in front of her. People moved out of our way like Moses parting the Red Sea. Most were respectful, allowing us the disability seating in the subway; others were not so tactful, like the guy who said to me, “Yeah, I’d like to hold your hand, too,” as we passed on the sidewalk.

I had a lot of questions to ask Crystal about her life, and she was not shy about giving answers and elaborating. “If I describe the scenery to you, do you have any context for understanding it?” She said she knew what green was because of the trees and grass she has felt, but I realized she didn’t know how the color green looked because she'd never actually seen it. (Try describing a color to someone without using other colors or an object of that color, and then you'll see how abstract it is.)

She talked about her life as a person who sees would. She liked to go shopping; when I asked her what for, she answered, “I don’t know, I just like to go look around.” Or when talking about movies, she’d say, “I saw such-and-such and loved it."

When I went to bed, she would be sitting on her mattress, either knitting a scarf or tapping on her Braille computer. I was about to ask if I could turn the lamp off when I realized how ridiculous the question was. I lay back and stared into the darkness, listening to her fingers and trying to imagine what it was like to be blind.

On the last evening of our stay, Crystal asked me to paint her nails. “I have a whole collection of colors,” she said excitedly, “I’m obsessed with them!” She brought me a tin lunch box and rooted through it until her fingers found the one she was looking for. “This red one I got for Christmas.”

“It’s a beautiful wine color,” I said.

“Oh really?”

I stroked it on her nails. While we waited for the first coat to dry, I asked her what God was teaching her. To trust him, she answered, and confessed her fears about a learning program she was going into and a bible college she wanted to attend in Europe.

“Does being blind make it hard to trust God?”

“Yes. Sometimes I wonder why he made me have a disability when he could have made me without it.” Crystal went on to talk about the passages in Scripture where Jesus heals the blind man. “I think God made him blind so that he could heal him and be glorified. I wonder if he wouldn’t have known Jesus if he hadn’t been blind. Somehow I want to glorify God with my disability.”

I encouraged her that God already was being glorified through her. She was the most selfless, trusting person I have ever met. She didn’t allow her physical blindness to blind her to the needs of others. She was always serving, always thinking about others’ needs before her own.

Her servant heart made me ashamed of my own trivial complaints. Her longing for learning and travel dispelled all worries that we would have nothing in common. Her vulnerability stirred a fierce protectiveness in me. Her fear and longing of love and acceptance was not so removed from my own.

I spent only a short time with Crystal, but from what I observed, I believe her to be the embodiment of 1 Corinthians 13: patient, kind, humble, honoring, servant-hearted, trusting, hoping, persevering.

I also observed that I—who have twice her capability to go places and accomplish things—haven’t half her love. I am the resounding gong and clanging symbol. I am the one who can see and can’t see all at once. Are those who are visually, orally, or aurally impaired the only ones who must live vulnerably, trustingly, dependently? What would my life look like if I lived as she does?