Gratitude Without Limits
A Note from Carol:
One of the most fulfilling aspects of my ministry is the privilege of partnering with others who have dedicated their lives to proclaiming the hope and truth found in God’s Word. I believe we are in a season where God is amplifying the voices of those uniquely called to inspire, encourage, and equip the Church.
Today, I’m thrilled to introduce you to Karen Wingate. She is not only a gifted author and speaker but also a passionate advocate for helping others discover the boundless love and grace of God. With her expertise in storytelling and her deep understanding of Scripture, Karen combines personal testimonies with biblical truth in a way that feels both relatable and transformative.
It is an honor to share my platform with her, and I know you will be deeply blessed by her insights.
Meet Karen Wingate
She’s an accomplished author, speaker, and Bible teacher with a heart for helping others see God’s faithfulness, both figuratively and literally. Born with a severe visual impairment, Karen’s miraculous partial healing has shaped her testimony and her passion for inspiring others to trust in God’s plan. She is the author of With Fresh Eyes: 60 Insights into the Miraculously Ordinary from a Woman Born Blind.
“Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18)
After living with legal blindness for over fifty years, I underwent a surgery that gave me improved vision I’d never had before. A year after the miraculous surgery, I traveled back to my hometown of Tucson, Arizona to visit family. As I entered the Tucson valley, I stared at the beautiful Catalina Mountain range that had long served as my northern compass point throughout my childhood. It longer looked like a flat line smudge of pink and dark purple as I saw it in my early years. Now I could see lines and contours that marked out canyons and peaks that gave depth and definition to these mountains I loved.
I wiped away tears, feeling emotions too strong to put into words. The mountains were beautiful, achingly beautiful. Although those mountains had stood like a sentry over my childhood home, on that day of my return, I felt like I was seeing them for the first time. On one hand, I wept because I was so filled with joy over the miracle of restoration that God had done. Another part of me mourned the loss of the past. I had missed out on so much.
I can identify with the conflict of emotions the Jewish exiles felt when they stood before the site of the second Temple. Some shouted with joy. Seeing the rebuilt Temple foundation carried overwhelming meaning to them. They were home. They were free. God’s beautiful Temple would rise again. Look at the great thing God had done.
Others wept loudly. They remembered bygone years when Solomon’s Temple stood strong and then was torn down. Seventy years of worship to God had been lost (see Ezra 3:10-13).
I’ve had people ask me what life is like for a visually impaired person. How can I possibly be grateful when I spent 55 years labeled as legally blind? Furthermore, even though I enjoy better eyesight now, I may yet lose the rest of what I have due to the fragile nature of my eyes. What is there to be grateful for?
God’s Word says to give thanks in all circumstances. How can any of us maintain a sense of gratitude about the lost past, the fragile present, and the uncertain future? It’s taken me decades to verbalize an answer, but here are five things I’ve learned so far.
Eyesight is only a small part of who I am. Or, as I’ve been known to quip, “Life is more than a pair of eyeballs.” I refuse to see myself only as a visually impaired person. I am so much more, and so are you. You are far more than the one thing that feels like a billboard or a stigmatized large letter emblazoned on your chest for the world to see. Don’t allow one part of you to define the whole of you.
I have so much else to be thankful for. I can hear, move, taste, touch, experience, give, believe, think, and create. It’s like having a bunch of beautifully wrapped presents setting on one side of me. On the other side is one scraggly, poorly wrapped present in a punched-in box. It would be unconscionable to focus only on that one present and complain that I don’t have as much as others when I have that beautiful pile of presents sitting beside me.
I choose to focus on the moment—of what I have today. Yes, I’ve had poor vision in the past. I may lose more as I age. But today, I can see what I see. I see mountains and waterfalls, stars and sunsets. Whenever friends and family join me in gazing at nature, they often ask me what I can see of it? More and more, my answer is, “I don’t see as much as you do, but I will enjoy what I can see.”
Through the loss, I have gained. If I had enjoyed normal vision throughout my life, I would have seen the details of those mountains every day. Or, maybe not. I could have taken them for granted and never paid much attention at all to the majesty situated a mere ten miles from my doorstep. In addition, I don’t believe I would be the person I am today without the struggle to see. Through my lifelong visual limitation, I’ve gained courage to move forward, compassion for others who struggle with weaknesses, and creativity to figure out alternate ways to accomplish simple life tasks.
Finally, God knows what is best for me. From the beginning of my life, God knew how my limited eyesight would bring Him glory and honor, and how it would give me opportunities to share His love and hope with other people. The same is true for you. God can use your personal story to open doors that will honor Him in ways you couldn’t do otherwise.
God’s obvious and not so obvious blessings surround each of us. He invites us to examine all His gifts from His eternal perspective of the past, present, and future. Because of who God is, what He has done, and what He has promised for your future, you can live a life of unlimited gratitude.
Karen Wingate is author of Grateful Heart: 60 Reasons to Give Thanks in All Things. You can connect with Karen at her website, www.karenwingate.com.
Seeing God’s Faithfulness with Karen Wingate
Welcome back to the Significant Women Podcast with Carol McLeod! On today’s show, Carol interviews author Karen Wingate, who shares her incredible life story of overcoming significant visual challenges from birth. Karen discusses her childhood experiences, her faith journey, the life-changing surgery she underwent at the age of 50, the legacy she hopes to pass on to her daughters, and her journey to becoming a writer. Listen in for a story of God’s faithfulness and work against odds!
What miracles do we miss when we close our eyes to the wonder of everyday moments?
In this busy, jaded world of ours, we often take for granted what we see every day. We may set aside time to spend with God in a quiet room, but we struggle to see his hand in a traffic jam or while walking the dog. But for Karen Wingate, sight itself is something extraordinary, and what our eyes can reveal is even more astounding.
Karen lived most of her life with severely limited sight due to a cluster of disorders stemming from a genetic defect. But through the chance outcome of a surgery, she regained sight in one eye that doubled her visual acuity--and allowed her to see things she had never seen before. And as she discovered a more detailed world for the first time, she also began to see God in every new discovery--from the prosaic numbers of a bathroom scale to the glory of sunsets.