The Woman Who Chose Her Own Label

In 1820, Fanny Crosby lost her sight at six weeks old when a country doctor applied a hot poultice to her infected eyes. By the world's measure, her identity was sealed — she was the blind girl, the one to be pitied, the one defined by what she could never do.

Fanny Crosby refused that label.

Over the course of 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 a well-meaning minister once expressed sympathy for her blindness, Crosby's response stunned him: "If I had been given a choice at birth, I would have chosen to be born blind, because when I get to heaven, the first face I will ever see will be the face of my Savior."

She didn't deny her condition. She simply refused to let it define her. Her identity wasn't built on what she lacked but on Whom she belonged to. The world saw a disabled woman. She saw herself as a beloved daughter of the Most High, entrusted with songs for His church.

Paul understood this reframing. "If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here" (2 Corinthians 5:17). The labels the world pins on us — our failures, limitations, and losses — are never the final word.

Your truest identity is not found in what has happened to you but in Who has claimed you.