Tabby's Eye

                                                                  Tabby's Eye

When I had a couple of teenagers, I realized that my children weren't having enough 'spiritual' experiences that would strengthen their testimonies. That is a hard one. You can't always "plan" a spiritual experience that you know will strengthen and build a persons testimony. Many factors are necessary for someone to have a  faith promoting experience. And I knew I could not make each situation perfect for that to happen. I began praying for my children that they might have testimony building experiences come to them. 

Brother Michael Wilcox, who taught a religion class I attended, told us one day that every family needs to have a miracle at least once during the course of raising their children or each individual needs to have their own personal miracle happen in their youth. 

As I prayed for faith promoting experiences to come to our family, opportunities began to come.

I learned to watch for them and to take advantage of those opportunities and prepare my children for a potential miracle and then let the Lord provide.

You all should remember the miracle of Tabby's eye!

We had a cat named Tabby who faithfully came to the back door every night to be let into the garage on  summer nights. Well one night she didn't come home. I stayed up late calling her but she never came.

It was not like her. We were leaving in two days to go to Lake Powell and I was too busy to worry too much about her.Well we found her at the door in the morning and she looked terrible! She looked like she had been drug through the field. Her left eye was weeping and swollen shut. When I pulled her eyelid back to look at it, it looked horrible. You could not make out the different parts of her eye, it was so swollen and injured.

It was Sunday morning and I didn't have time to wait to take her into the Vet since we were leaving early Monday morning to head out for Lake Powell with some other families. So I called the Vet and Jenny and I took her in to see him.

He said he would keep her in the hospital and administer antibiotics while we were gone. I thought that would be great. We left and I didn't give it another thought, knowing that she would be well cared for.

When we got back a week later, we discovered that not only was her eye not better but it looked to be much worse. The Vet gave us two choices. We could have her eye taken out, which would cost us $350.00 or we could have her put to sleep. Jenny who was with me, began to cry at the thought. It didn't make me feel too good either. I didn't know what to do. So I asked the Vet if he would give us a few minutes to think about it before we made the decision. 

I didn't want to put her to sleep and neither did Jenny, but I also knew that I couldn't afford to have her eye removed.

I asked Jenny if we should pray about it and she said yes.  We each bowed our heads and silently said a little prayer. As I was praying I got a mental picture of Tabby and she was looking at me with two very normal eyes. I knew somehow her eye would be healed and I felt that we should take her home. I asked Jenny how she felt and she said, "I feel like we should take her home." She confirmed my feelings and when the Vet came back, I asked him if it would hurt if we just took her home and continued with the antibiotics to see if it would get better. He said he thought that it would be ok, so we did.

We  began to pray for her and her eye. I fasted for her and asked Heavenly Father to bless our family with this miracle. Her eye began to improve almost immediately!  We could see the different parts of her eyeball. It began to look very bloodshot. When we took her back to the Vet a week later for a check up, he was amazed and said her eye looked "2,000% better!" He explained why her eye looked so bloodshot. He said, "Look, her eye is forming hundreds of blood vessels that are repairing and mending her eye".  He sent us home and told us to keep doing what ever we were doing and come back in another week.

We came back in a week with a nearly perfect cat. A small scar on her eye was all that was left. The Vet said there had been another cat in with the exact same injury and he had sent them home and told them to do the same thing that we had done, but the cat's eye became so bad that they had to remove it. I told him when he asked me what it was that we had done, I had to answer truthfully, "We prayed for her." 

It was a miracle. I could have easily let it pass and just said put her to sleep, but I took advantage of an opportunity that could be, if the Lord allowed, a faith promoting experience, which it was.

I bare testimony to you that the Lord will always bless your children with those experiences, if you pray for them and watch for those opportunities when they come. And notice, that he gave us a witness that it was a miracle, by showing us that a cat in the same situation did not have the same results as Tabby did. I have seen that many times, that the Lord will give me proof of the miracle. I bare testimony to you that the Lord will always bless your children with those experiences, if you pray for them and watch for those opportunities when they come. 
I am thankful to our Heavenly Father for blessing our family with these testimony building experiences. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen..

Love, Nana