A Christmas Miracle

On Thursday, the children both had eye doctor appointments.  It was a crazy appointment because we had Brick and Cora with us, but Brandt and Blythe's eyes are fine.  Blythe has expressed a great desire to get contacts, but so far, Kent and I have not felt that she is responsible enough to deal with contacts.  Far too often I have to remind her to put on her glasses, she won't clean them herself, she takes them off and leaves them places.  She, however, made quite a point of saying how much she wants contacts, repeatedly, in fact, so Dr. Price talked to us about them and said he would send me some information via email that we could look over and then decide.  I told Blythe that Kent and I would discuss it, we would talk with her, and we would see how we should move forward.

Friday after school, Blythe arrived home and held out her glasses to me.  The right lens was missing.  She said, "I was playing at school today, out in the field, and Lilly was chasing me.  I tripped and my glasses flew off my face and the lens popped out.  We looked all over for it and couldn't find it."  

'Hmmmm.  That's quite a story,' I thought.  I can see all sorts of holes in this narrative.  It would have to be a pretty hard fall to knock her glasses off, and even harder for a frame to come out.  The grass is all dead-ish and brown, not perky and green, so the likelihood of something getting lost in the grass this time of year is fairly remote.  And how surprising that this happened the day after Blythe was so adamant that she get contacts.  I don't, however, lie to the children, and I like to hope that they don't lie to me, so I didn't say anything to Blythe.  

She went all weekend without wearing her glasses.  They sat on her dresser by the side of her bed.  Yesterday evening, however, we had a Christmas miracle!  I picked up a book off the stairs to carry up to the bedroom, and something dropped out of it, or off of it, and sort to tinkled as it hit the stairs.  It sounded exactly like something glassy.  So I walked carefully down the stairs and discovered, to my amazement, the missing lens from Blythe's glasses!  The lens that was lost in the grass!  Miraculously, it found its way home. 

I replaced it in the frames, and this morning, as Blythe was getting ready for school, shared with her the good news of the miracle that had occurred.  Oddly enough, she didn't look thrilled.  I asked her to retrieve her glasses and put them back on.  She went up to her room and then returned some moments later without them on.  I asked her to go back and get them, and when she wouldn't, I went up to fetch them.  I found them, again, without a lens.  When presented with the frames, she refused to hand over the lens, and stubbornly would not budge.  She went off to school without her glasses on.  Again.  

Little does Blythe realize that she isn't helping her cause by being irresponsible about the whole glasses situation.  She wants her way, but she wants it the easy way, without working for it or showing us how responsible she can be.  When she got home from school she had her glasses on with both lens in the frames, but she failed to understand that wanton destruction of her glasses is not going to get her contacts.  

The struggle continues.