The Blind Woman Who Saw More Clearly

Fanny Crosby lost her sight at six weeks old when a careless doctor applied a mustard poultice to her infected eyes. By every measure of her nineteenth-century world, her identity was sealed — she was the blind girl, the limited one, the object of pity.

But Fanny refused that label. At eight years old, she wrote a poem that revealed the identity she had already claimed: "Oh, what a happy soul I am, although I cannot see! I am resolved that in this world, contented I will be."

She went on to write over eight thousand hymns, including Blessed Assurance, whose opening line became her autobiography: "Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!" When well-meaning friends expressed sorrow over her blindness, Fanny offered a response that silenced every room: "If I had been given a choice at birth, I would have chosen to be blind — for the first face I will ever see will be the face of my Savior."

The world told Fanny Crosby who she was. God told her something different. And she believed God.

We all carry labels the world has pressed onto us — failure, addict, divorced, not enough. But the Almighty who knit you together does not define you by your wounds. Second Corinthians 5:17 declares that anyone in Christ is a new creation. The old labels have been peeled away.

Your circumstances may name your situation. Only God gets to name you.