Yesterday I made passing mention to the time I almost blinded our oldest daughter, Rachael. I thought maybe I better start there before you think the less of me. So here is how the story goes:

This was back when Rachael was right at eye level with the gas tank opening of our car. (I bet you’re already getting the picture, huh?) At the time she thought it was great fun to jump out of the car at the gas station and help Daddy fill the tank. What could be the harm in that, right?

Well on this particular day she didn’t quite get the nozzle fully inserted and as soon as she pressed the handle, gas started splashing back into her huge and wide open eyes. Worst yet, in what seemed like one of those forever moments, the nozzle didn’t auto shut off right away so looking back it seems like gallons of gasoline sprayed everywhere.

Rachael screamed bloody murder. (Only someone knowing our Rachael can know just how high pitched and piercing that scream can be.) I scooped her up and ran straight into the bathroom yelling at the attendant to call 911 as I passed. I kept flushing her eyes with water as much as I could but she kept screaming, “Daddy, I can’t see! I can’t see!”

As I recall the ambulance showed up incredibly quickly. Even so, as I flushed Rachael’s eyes, I must have run through my mind several dozen times what it would be like to live for the rest of our lives with a daughter I blinded through my negligence. I rode in the ambulance with Rachael and the cool, calm, and professionally detached though not uncaring paramedics. Gale followed with the other kids in the car.

Thankfully somewhere along the ride to the emergency room or perhaps it was in the first moments in the examining room, Rachael was able to say between sobs that she was beginning to see again but that everything was blurry. The doctor did some doctor voodoo shining a light in Rachael’s eyes in the midst of it and proclaimed that she would be fine. I’m not sure how long it was before she actually was fine but it was quick enough that I had to pinch myself and ask, “Did that really happen?” or were Rachael’s eyes so bloodshot from playing in the chlorinated pool?

Isn’t that the way with crisis like these? They come on in a twinkling of a moment and if we’re fortunate, disappear just as quickly. Other times our lives are turned topsy turvy just as quickly never again to return to “normal.”