For the First Time

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspiried and success achieved.

-Helen Keller

How telling it is that Helen Keller would speak of strength and vision. It’s reminds of Ginny Owens, the blind Christian singer/songwriter, whose favorite song is Be Thou My Vision. Helen grew up as a girl both blind and deaf.

I was really moved after watching a video of her life and the dramatic way in which she came to see all that she had been taught by her tutor as her way of trying to reach her, to communicate to her. According to the film, Helen Keller’s tutor had taught her to speak using the tactical sensation of someone’s hand shapes in her palm. Speech would not work, since she was deaf, and sign language would not work, since she was blind. This technique was like sign language for the blind – done in a way in which she could “feel” the words. But for so long, she didn’t get it. She learned and went through the motions, but it never reached her. She spent her days isolated, cut off from others, unable to communicate in the most basic way.

One afternoon, she was fetching water from a well and felt the water running through her hands. She dropped the bucket and stood up sharp, a kind of contorted unbelief crossing her face. She felt the water again, then ran for her tutor. She made the sign for “water” in her tutor’s hand, so hurried and excited she had to repeat it. The tutor, who had finally given up on Helen after so long not connecting, almost couldn’t believe it. She started making the sign for “dirt” and “bucket”, for “dress” and “hair”. She got it. It all came rushing to her like an avalanche, a waterfall of understanding. The entire world suddenly opened up to Helen.

I wrote some words to a song I called “Helen Keller” at a time when that for me was a picture of my entering into Grace. Deaf to His calling, blind to His wooing, He came to speak a language I would grasp. He came to write it in the sand and in my palm. For so long I had missed it. Like Helen, I remember feeling the Water rushing through my fingers, dodging my grasp, and my heart skipping a beat in the moment it all came.

I run my hands through the water of life,
amazed to be alive.
In one flash, in one instant moment of grace,
I catch a glimpse of Your face,
my heart’s home, where I strive to be
but could never reach –
And so your waters rush over me.

And like a waterfall of love
rises the sun
Like the roar of an ocean
is your ceaseless devotion
for your precious ones
for me, your son
And for the first time
my eyes perceive beauty,
though they’ve never seen before
And my ears hear an invitation
from this, my Lover Lord

The breeze it blows to take me back
Into your secret place again