OPINION:
When Helen Keller died in 1968 at the age of 87, she was rightly hailed “as a symbol of the indomitable human spirit” – a heroine who overcame blindness and deafness and triumphed in tragedy.
Helen Keller Day, an annual observance of her birth each June 27th, provides us with a great opportunity to highlight this remarkable woman – and glean from her life the many lessons and principles desperately needed today.
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Many may not realize Helen Keller was born with normal communication abilities. Although it was unknown at the time, experts now believe it was either scarlet fever or meningitis at 18 months of age that took her vision and hearing.
Yet, with the help of a teacher, the youngster pushed ahead, leaning to speak by first feeling hand signals pressed into the palm of her hand and then by feeling the vibrations of sounds from another’s mouth.
After attending various schools for the deaf in Boston and New York, she was admitted and graduated cum laude within four years from Radcliffe College. She soon began writing and lecturing all over the country.
Few of us may face the challenges of losing our sight, hearing and ability to talk. But all of us face some degree of challenge. Perhaps it’s a congenital condition or physical limitations brought about by an accident or normal aging. It might be tempting to gripe and groan about it – but Helen Keller reminds us that the thing to do is to confront it head-on.
“The only thing worse than blindness is having sight but no vision,” she once said.
Scripture says that we lose our way without vision (Proverbs 29:18).
Listen to the ReFOCUS with Jim Daly podcast, where Jim digs deep and asks the hard questions to help you share Christ’s grace, truth and love.
Vision is the ability to focus your attention on God’s plan and His ability to accomplish it. God calls each of us to a vision that is bigger than us. He invites us into things that require the best of us and that will outlive us.
What is that “thing” for you?
Miss Keller never let her limitations define her. Instead, she leveraged the skills and talents she had and far exceeded the accomplishments of those who seemingly weren’t faced with any significant physical handicaps at all.
“I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad,” she once wrote. “Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times, but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers. The wind passes, and the flowers are content.”
Does the prospect of writing a book strike you as a daunting task? Undeterred by her blindness, Miss Keller wrote “The Story of My Life,” “Optimism,” “The World I Live In,” “Light in My Darkness,” and “The Open Door.”
What was her secret?
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart,” she observed.
You wouldn’t believe this by looking at the world, which seems to prioritize money and power over faith and family – but most intuitively know it. When illness comes or a house is threatened by a wildfire, we rally around people, not possessions.
Miss Keller had her slip-ups. As a young and idealistic woman, she joined the Socialist Party. She eventually backed away from it, especially as she grew older and matured.
As Miss Keller approached her twilight, the famed advocate stated: “I believe that all through these dark and silent years, God has been using my life for a purpose I do not know but one day I shall understand and then I will be satisfied.”
God has a purpose for your life and mine. We may not always understand what He’s up to and why He chooses to add more weight to some people’s shoulders than others. But as we pause once more to remember the life and times of Helen Keller, let’s never forget that struggle can be a hidden blessing, that there is joy in the pursuit to overcome – and that true vision is a lot more than what we can only see with our eyes.
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Jim Daly is president of Focus on the Family and host of its daily radio broadcast, heard by more than 6 million listeners a week on nearly 2,000 radio stations across the U.S. He also hosts the podcast ReFocus with Jim Daly.
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