Fence posts

Editorials and Columns

November 29, 2025

EVERYDAY FAITH

The farm that I grew up on in Michigan’s thumb was filled with fence lines surrounding the fields.  Trees surrounded each of the fields, but upon closer examination, the trees had grown up around the original markings that had been placed there.  The property lines that surrounded our property  were

lined with old cedar stumps.  These were the original markings that the pioneers had put in place. As the stumps were set up on their sides, the flat part was to face the neighbor, so that the neighbor knew the exact location of the property line. 

     But, within the property on our farm, the lines were also marked with fences.  Because they too had been placed generations before my family had lived there, these old fences were half fallen down, rusty, and intertwined with vines and brush.

      As a kid, there were times where we would have to redo fence lines - especially around our barn, where we needed to keep the animals confined.  It was quite a process to put the fences up, but there was something incredibly satisfying about looking back down the fence line and seeing the tops of the fence posts sticking up one after another for the length of an entire field.

      Each of us in our Christian walks of faith has markers in our past where we recognize that God intervened on our behalf.  As we look back on our life, we see one fence post after another of God’s goodness to us.  The story I’m about to tell is one of those for my family.

      My brother-in-law and sister-in-law had started to have a family a few years before my wife and I, and as they were raising their kids, they discovered that there was a  rare genetic condition where the kids were born with cataracts. This revealed itself in their oldest daughter, and she found herself running back and forth to the University of Michigan hospital trying to correct her vision.  

     The eye doctor they worked with warned that any child born in the family should be checked for cataracts.  So, as my wife and I had kids, ourselves, we were on high alert for this.  

     The years went on, and nothing showed itself until one day when we were on vacation in Ontario at the Sudbury Science Center.  They had a whole section on the human eye, and each of our kids took turns taking the eye tests that were there. 

      As my son took his turn and covered up his eye, he was able to read right through the letters that were in front of him with his other eye. Then he switched eyes, and as he did this, we discovered that he couldn’t see anything out of the second one.

      Jen and I were obviously taken aback by this, and Caleb did the test multiple times with the same results. 

     Since we were on  vacation  and couldn’t immediately do anything about it, we tried not to make it into a big deal and focused on enjoying our time there.  

   When we got home though, we immediately set up an appointment down at U of M to see the same eye specialist that our niece had been working with.  In our initial consultation and running Caleb through a battery of tests, the doctor concluded that Caleb did, in fact, have the cataract condition that had shown itself with our niece.  

     The cataract had been with Caleb throughout his early years, and he had just learned to adapt with that as his normal way of life.  The doctor recommended a surgery that was still in the experimental stages at the time. They could go in and remove the cataract and put in an artificial lens in the eye.  The trick was that the surgery could only be done one time, and the size of the lens would have to be forecasted to fit him as he would need it as an adult.  

     A bigger concern with doing the surgery though was that the nerve in  his bad eye may no longer be functioning the way it should due to its nonuse, and if it didn’t work, he would still have no vision in that eye. 

     We asked the doctor what the chances for success were, and he simply told us it was a 50/50. There was no way of knowing if the nerve would respond.

     We made the decision to move forward and try the surgery.  Caleb was already not seeing out of the eye, so the surgery couldn’t make it any worse. We figured it was worth the risk. 

     Throughout this process, we had dear friends and a church family who were praying for Caleb.  It was a moment where we needed God’s intervention, and as parents, we felt pretty helpless.  

     The day of the surgery came, and after Caleb had been prepped, the medical team asked me if I would walk Caleb down to the operating room to help keep him calm.  I will never forget walking him down the hallway and entering the operating room.  He hopped up on the table, and I watched them put him under.  The walk back down that hallway to the waiting room was filled with tears.

      A couple of hours later, the doctor talked to us and told us that the surgery went just fine.  We were to stay overnight with him at a hotel, and then come back to his office in the morning for a quick check-up.  Caleb had a patch covering his eye to protect it, and we just tried to keep the tone of things light while we waited.

      The next morning, we showed up for the appointment, and the doctor took the patch off Caleb’s eye.  It  was watery and bloodshot.  As the doctor started doing tests on the eye, he began to smirk. 

     There would be no waiting to see if the nerve would come around and start working. Caleb was able to see that very next morning after surgery. Oh, it wasn’t perfect, and there would be aspects that would have to be monitored for years to come, but God had reached down with favor on Caleb, and we rejoiced!

      When we returned to Alpena, I shared Caleb’s story with our church family on a Wednesday night. Everyone was elated for the good news, but I must confess that I had a hesitancy in sharing the testimony there. You see, sitting there that night was an elderly woman who had been struggling with cataracts herself.  She too had been seeing doctors and hoping to have her vision restored. Prayers had been said for her as well.  

     You see, God has the right to say ‘yes’ to our prayers.  He has the right to say ‘no’, and he also has the right to say ‘just wait’.  

    I don’t claim to know why God answers the way he does, but I have faith that he always has our best interests in mind. He knows each of our stories better than we do, and the troubles that we experience along the way are only temporary. 

   When I reflect back a bit during the holidays, this is a fence post that’s ever present for me. I know that God answered our prayers and was gracious to us, and because I can see that fence post in my past, I can trust him to set the next post in my future, whatever that may be.