Joyce Urch and her husband Eric celebrated their golden anniversary in a way she never envisioned.  Blinded by a hereditary illness 26 years ago, Joyce has lived amongst 5 kids, 12 grandkids, and 3 great-grandkids, some of whom she has known only by sound or touch.  Rushed to the hospital with chest pains a year ago, she was afraid she was about to lose even this.  A few days after her admittance, Mrs. Urch suffered a serious heart attack and was nearing kidney failure; doctors did not expect her to live.  It was only after a lifesaving operation and an unlikely recovery that Joyce was able to open her eyes again, a feat that shocked the entire family—herself included.  Mrs. Urch woke up seeing.

Her husband describes the stunned reactions of a family indelibly marked by blindness suddenly given the gift of sight.  At first he didn't believe her frenetic bedside declarations—"I can see!  I can see!"  He immediately asked her what color sweater he was wearing.  "She leaned forward," said Mr. Urch, "and she just looked at me and said, 'Haven't you got old.'  And I said, 'Wait 'til you have a look in the mirror.'"  

In a seminary course on pastoral counseling, we were required to examine the stages of human development and the principle crises each stage begets in the life of an individual.  For many of us, understanding particular life events in the context of the stage of development in which they occurred compelled new depths for self-reflection.  The loss of a parent, for instance, during the critical stage when trust or mistrust is developed suggests that trust may be an area of impact and concern.  As we peered reflectively and retrospectively at each of these stages in our own lives, many of us found ourselves startled at the clearer images in front of us.  Yet, looking closely in these mirrors, the images were not always immediately recognizable.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to look in a mirror after 20 years of knowing your face by touch and imagination alone.  Just as you or I would be startled by our own likeness after an absence of self-reflection, Joyce Urch notes the difficulty of learning to recognize the stranger in the mirror.  She is learning to see herself and the world around her—again. 

In the striving of self-reflection and in the wake of existential wrestling, we similarly learn to see again and again.  Arguably, like Joyce, we learn to see ourselves again for the first time.  In many ways, each developmental stage in our lives places the same task before us all over again, though perhaps in new light:  Who am I?  Where did I come from?  Where am I going?  Why am I here?

Seldom can one fail to recall a time marked by restlessness in the stages of human development, a yearning for answers amidst turmoil or confusion.  For many, it is the tender age of adolescence; for others it is the inquisitive years of college, the emptiness of a midlife crisis, the vulnerability of childhood.  Though looking back at these formative events from infancy to adulthood may be for many like looking at a picture we don't want to recognize, upon opening our eyes, we might just discover that we now are able to see what was there all along: another figure in the reflection standing beside us, the God who was there even when we were sure we were alone.  J.R.R. Tolkien's words offer a telling picture for those convinced at what they do not see: "The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it."

The stages and crises of development that most transform us are stages that inherently seem to bid us to ask the existential questions we were somehow meant to ask all along.  To understand why a particular struggle of adolescence or a trauma of young adulthood shaped us the way it did may be wearisome or frustrating, but in our attempts to revisit the formative nature of these years, we just may find ourselves treading on holy ground.  As Joseph learned on his way from the pit to the throne, God is Lord even over the process.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.