On Friday morning, I woke to the alarm on my cell phone. I reached over to turn it off, still flat on my back. Then the world tilted to the right and I felt like a chicken on a rotisserie being flipped over to finish the cooking process, but I hadn't moved an inch. Vertigo had given me the perception that I was moving when I was not.
That feeling has come back on and off over this weekend, so like anybody in this information age, I started researching it on the internet. I found that the most common reason for vertigo is something called benign paroxysmal positional vertigo. It is caused by tiny calcium particles that are naturally present in a jelly-like substance in your ear that move out of place and clump up in canals of your inner ear, distorting your perception about gravity and balance. Nothing foreign or infectious has entered your body. Something is just in the wrong place.
About four years ago, I was working with an adorable little blond kindergartener at school, when across my field of vision appeared what looked like a worm. I was wearing contact lenses then and I assumed that a tiny hair or piece of fiber from my clothing had made its way into my eye. As soon as I was free to check it out, I removed the lens and found that the "worm" was still there. After a visit to my eye doctor, I found that this was my first real experience with a floater. Floaters are also part of something natural. The jelly-like vitreous inside the eyeball becomes more liquid and little fibers clump up and cast shadows on the retina. Again, something that was a normal part of my body moved out of place and caused me to see something that wasn't really there at all and interfered with me seeing what was directly in front of me.
So why is this important? You don't care about the minutiae of all my little medical peculiarities. It's significant because, if you listen to what God is saying in any of your everyday little circumstances, you can learn something that is totally different than what the surface situation may be.
You see, there are things in my life that are natural and normal and right and good. I have a husband, children, a grandchild, friends, a job, a church, hobbies, and amusements that are all things that God means for me to enjoy. I can spend time on these people and things with no condemnation whatsoever. They are the things that make up my life. Having an interest in these aspects of my life is not sinful, but prioritizing any of them over my relationship with God is missing the mark. When these things are moved into the wrong place, I experience "spiritual vertigo"- a difficulty with keeping my balance - an interference with my perspective. Little "floaters" of distraction move across my spiritual vision, obscuring the God I should be looking to above all things. I have been guilty of this so often that I should have learned this lesson well by now. Sometimes God has to show you something many times before you finally understand what He is trying to say.
One home treatment during an attack of vertigo is called visual fixation where you pick a spot on the horizon and focus your vision there while you are moving. The floaters finally cleared up on their own and the vertigo is gradually subsiding. I didn't have control over either of these conditions, but I have control over my spiritual vision and balance if I submit them to God and keep my focus on the horizon He has set for me to seek.
The Bible says it this way, "I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken. (Psalm 16:8)
Colossians 3:1-3 says, "Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.
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