Walking by Faith

2 Corinthians 5:7 “For we walk by faith, not by sight.”

In order to explain why this is my favorite verse let me introduce myself. I’m a 25 year-old Christian. I operate a canteen that serves the employees of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. I enjoy raising, exhibiting and marketing Simmental beef cattle breeding stock with my family. We run about 12 cows, who raise mostly embryo calves each year. In addition to the cattle, my family and I have corgis that keep us on our toes and bring us lots of joy daily. I enjoy listening to music, keeping up with sports and technology, and spending time with friends when I have the chance. Oh and I also happen to have been totally blind since I was about 3 years old. 

I was born with retinoblastoma, which is a cancer of the retina. After being diagnosed at 6 months old, my family and I along with an excellent team of doctors and nurses fought it tirelessly for about 2 1/2 years. However, chemo, radiation, experimental treatments, and just short of 40 surgeries weren’t able to have lasting success pushing back the cancer which was attacking my eyes. As a result, one eye and then the other was enucleated in order to prevent the cancer from taking the short path through the optical nerve to my brain. 

Here’s where 2 Corinthians comes in to play in this story, which so far from the outside looking in may sound pretty dark and gloomy. Maybe not for me personally yet, but for those around me. Fortunately for me as a kid less than 3 years old, I didn’t require much guidance to navigate those trying times. My family and the medical professionals took care of me through the treatments, and as far as losing my vision, getting used to not having something that was never very strong to begin with is no big challenge to a 3 year-old. I really have little to no memories from that time in my life. On the other hand, try if you will to put yourself in the shoes of my parents and grandparents. It was undoubtedly a very trying, hectic, emotional and stressful time for them. They leaned heavily on their faith for guidance, direction, and comfort in those years, which was something I would grow up to adopt in my own life. 

As I eluded to before, I’m thankful for the fact that there was never a whole lot of adapting to the change of losing my vision for me. After losing both eyes before the age of 3, I grew up and experienced everything any kid would in my own way and never knew any different. Instead of learning to read and write in print, I learned Braille. When my classmates spent time working on their cursive writing skills, I spent time with a teacher of the visually impaired developing my typing skills to work towards accessing the world through accessible technology. I learned to travel using a cane, and many other skills that allow me to function as an independent person in the very visual world around me. 

As I got older, my family moved and my sister and I each got a Simmental heifer for my 6th birthday. I’m not sure we were aware at the time, but kids have to be 9 years old before they can start showing cattle in junior events. Once we reached that age, we started showing. We learned and grew in the industry as a family with time. It’s almost embarrassing now to look back at some of the mistakes made and high hopes held for low quality animals in those early years. Through trial and error, kind guidance from many families much more experienced and wise than we were, and several opportunities that can only be explained as blessings from God, we’ve been blessed to build a fairly competitive program for its size. 

Continuing on my way, I went to public school alongside my sighted peers. I was so blessed to be in a school system that made sure I had all the resources I needed to be successful. My life took a big turn my sophomore year of high school when I joined FFA. It gave me a group to fit in with in a school of 2,500. I grew so much thanks to teachers and advisors who saw more potential in me than I saw in myself. After initially being forced to begin participating in career development events such as beef impromptu speaking and the parliamentary procedures team, I found a passion for them. More than that though, these contests were a vehicle that got me on the road to losing my shyness and recognizing the scope of agriculture beyond my enjoyment of showing cattle with my family. I discovered that I wanted to study agriculture in college, and started at Morehead State University as an agricultural business student. After a couple years I realized that i was more interested in working with people than numbers, and changed majors to animal science with a minor in strategic communications and leadership. 

I graduated in the spring of 2017 and immediately found a job in my field that I loved and everything was perfect just like I had always imagined it would be. Wait, no, that’s not quite how it went. Being a student was the only occupation I had ever really known, and I found out that my general idea of what I thought I wanted to do wasn’t going to fall in to place that easily. I always told people that I wanted to sell or market for some type of agricultural company. The issue is that a lot of those companies in my area are related to horses. I didn’t really want to do that, I’m a cattleman after all, remember? It’s also not always the easiest task to convince someone that they need to give a blind guy with little to no work experience a chance to prove what he can do. Plenty of my sighted friends graduated and experienced these same issues, but I do feel I faced discrimination in some instances. That’s fine though, God always has a plan. Eventually a really good job opportunity pretty well found me, and that’s what I do today. We’ll explore that path more later. 

For now we need to take this to the barn and get to what 2 Corinthians 5:7 means to me. About time isn’t it? I’ve been blessed to live out a more literal definition of walking by faith rather than sight, but everyone has to do the same in their own way. For me I look at what all has happened in my life and all I’ve been blessed with and see how faithful God has been. He promised my family that he would always take care of me years ago when I was a baby fighting cancer, and man has he delivered! I pride myself on working pretty hard and putting in the effort required, but I know that I have come further and had more success than anything I have done warrants. Here on Earth we have to live knowing and believing that this isn’t our home, and that more than what meets the eye awaits those who put their faith in Jesus. It’s not easy to be certain of what we can’t see, whether physically or spiritually. Trust me when I say I fail to do so adequately on the regular. I encourage you, as I do myself, to keep the faith! It’s amazing what God can do, and what we trust he will do for eternity. If you don’t know Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, I encourage you to give him a chance. Read one of the gospels, like the book of John, and let what he did for you sink in. For me, the hope I find in my walk with him and the foundation it provides in the craziness that life can be, is everything.