Eight Thousand Songs She Never Read

When Fanny Crosby was six weeks old, a traveling doctor applied the wrong treatment to her infected eyes and left her permanently blind. By any measure, it was a tragedy — a life diminished before it had truly begun.

But at eight years old, Fanny wrote a poem that stunned the adults around her: "Oh, what a happy soul I am, although I cannot see; I am resolved that in this world, contented I will be."

That resolve never left her. Over the next nine decades, Fanny Crosby composed more than eight thousand hymns — Blessed Assurance, To God Be the Glory, Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior — songs that have been sung by millions in every corner of the world. She used over two hundred pen names because publishers refused to print that many hymns under a single author's name.

And when asked about her blindness, she said something remarkable: "If I had been given the choice, I would have chosen to be born blind — because when I get to heaven, the first face that shall ever gladden my sight will be that of my Savior."

Fanny Crosby didn't succeed in spite of her limitation. She understood that the Almighty had threaded purpose through her very brokenness.

Some of us are waiting for our circumstances to improve before we step into what God has called us to do. But the God who wastes nothing — not a single hurt, not a single closed door — is already using the very thing you wish He would take away. Your limitation may be the instrument through which He intends to play His finest song.