Eight Thousand Songs from Stolen Sight

When Fanny Crosby was six weeks old, a man posing as a doctor applied hot mustard poultices to her inflamed eyes. The treatment destroyed her sight permanently. She would never see a sunset, a loved one's face, or the words of the hymns she would one day write.

You might expect bitterness. A lifetime of rage toward the man who stole her vision. But Crosby refused to carry that weight. Years later, she said that if she could meet him, she would thank him over and over again for making her blind. She believed her blindness had turned her heart inward — toward the voice of the Almighty, toward melodies she might never have heard with sighted distractions.

From that place of radical forgiveness, Fanny Crosby wrote over eight thousand hymns. Blessed Assurance. To God Be the Glory. Pass Me Not, O Gentle Saviour. Songs that have carried millions of believers through grief, doubt, and joy for more than a century.

Here is what forgiveness did: it didn't just free Fanny Crosby from bitterness. It opened a channel through which God poured blessing on the entire world.

Unforgiveness is a locked door. We think it protects us, but it only traps us inside with our pain. Forgiveness turns the key — and on the other side, the Almighty is waiting with a song you haven't heard yet.