The Woman Who Chose Her Blindness

When Fanny Crosby was just six weeks old, a doctor's careless mistake left her permanently blind. She would never see a sunset, never read a printed page, never look into the face of someone she loved. By every measure the world uses to define a life, hers was diminished before it began.

But Fanny Crosby refused to let her blindness become her identity. Over her ninety-four years, she wrote more than eight thousand hymns, including Blessed Assurance, To God Be the Glory, and Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior. When someone once expressed pity for her condition, she responded with words that still arrest the heart: "If I had been given a choice at birth, I would have chosen to be blind, for when I get to heaven, the first face I will see will be the face of my Savior."

Think about that. She didn't just accept her limitation — she reframed it as a gift, because she knew her truest identity wasn't found in what she could or couldn't do. It was found in Whose she was.

The world will always try to define you by your limitations, your failures, your circumstances. But the God who knit you together in your mother's womb has already spoken your identity: you are His. And as Fanny wrote with such certainty, that is blessed assurance.