I didn’t ‘see’ the light, until I was blind

I was born in 1943 in Lewisham hospital, London, and was brought up in Bromley in Kent. My dad was a civil servant; he was a tax inspector of all things. My mum was a teacher. I didn’t have a Christian upbringing. 

Difficult marriages

I met my first husband when I was 17 on a bus. I was with a friend, and he was with a friend. I wish I’d never laid eyes on him, as he was a very cruel man – both violent and unfaithful.

We were married for seven years and had three children, Tracie, my daughter, was born in 1961. Then Steven, born in 1963, and Darren was born in 1967.

I wasn’t very academic; I preferred painting and drawing. When I was 23 I trained to be a driving instructor in Streatham, and then later on, after I divorced, I moved to the other side of London, and started my own publishing company, in my late 20s. 

I also married again, but I married somebody that I knew I didn’t love. We were together for a few years. I knew that it wasn’t going to be a proper marriage but when I told my mother, she said: “You’ve got to marry him. I’ve sent out all the invitations now!” For that reason, I married him.

A life-changing accident

In 1978 I was running my publishing business in Ruislip. One winter’s day I was waiting for a rep to bring in her advertising copy, because we were going to press the following day with a new magazine issue. She said she would come at 6pm, but she often let me down so, when she hadn’t arrived by 6.30pm, I decided to go to her house to collect it. I was driving along, and encountered a patch of black ice. My car had just had its MOT and been serviced, and I was a good driver, but when I hit this patch, I skidded. My car went sideways across the road and, as I looked up, I was on the other side of the road, with a transit van coming towards me. 

The van crashed into me and I was thrown from the driver’s seat horizontally across to the window on the passenger side, and then back into my seat. I wasn’t knocked out though, and remember opening the door of the car, stepping outside and wondering why the streetlights had gone off, because it was completely black. At the time, I didn’t know that I was blind. 

I was taken to hospital, where they operated on me for six hours, removing thousands of tiny bits of glass from my eyes and eyebrows, but they could not save my eyes. My son Steven was 14 at the time, and he asked the surgeon if one of his eyes could be transplanted so I could see again. He was so disappointed when the surgeon told him this was not possible.

After two weeks I was discharged, and in the end Tracie, then 16, left school to look after me. I tried to carry on with the publishing business, but without my sight it was impossible.

Wrestling with the truth

In December 1984, six years after the accident, I moved in with my parents. My new GP increased my pain medication and I began having fits. I was referred to a psychiatrist who decided on a one-year programme of withdrawal of the benzodiazepine tranquillisers and sleeping pills I had become addicted to. 

With the resulting renewed alertness, I became more aware of my predicament and many losses. My mother made enquiries with the local church and I became good friends with the Christians who visited me at home. I wanted to know how and when they had become Christians and their answers fascinated me.

My son Steven was 14 at the time, and he asked the surgeon if one of his eyes could be transplanted so I could see again

They began to share scriptures with me, and two of them, Lyn and Pauline, recorded scriptures on cassette for me to listen to. They had what I wanted: joy and inner peace. 

A curate from the church, Rev Alex Welby, invited me to his home where he and his wife Jane shared the gospel. I had also been listening to Bible study cassettes by various teachers for the last year and found them fascinating.

I wanted to believe, but the immaculate conception and resurrection both seemed like fairy tales. One evening I was standing before a picture in my bedroom – I couldn’t see it with my eyes, but it had been described to me in detail: The Light of the World by Holman Hunt. In the picture, Christ is holding a lantern and standing outside a door. I thought of the scripture that had inspired the artist, Revelation 3:20: “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”

I remembered Alex had told me that faith was a gift from God, and I could ask Jesus to come into my heart. I walked back to my bed and dropped to my knees, repenting, remembering all my sins. Tears of shame began to run down my face as I thought of all the people I had hurt. That night, for the first time in years, I slept soundly and deeply for a full eight hours. Something supernatural had happened to me while I slept. Overnight my cynicism and doubt had gone and now I believed. The gift was life changing to me. My depression lifted entirely. By March 1986 the withdrawal programme was complete. Within a few months I learned to cook, use a washing machine and microwave. I later learned to use a sewing machine. 

Joy and pain

I was having braille lessons when my teacher told me about Sound Around, a cassette magazine for blind people from the RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People). After listening to the magazine, I decided to record a message to send in to Sound Around’s pen pal section. I felt I needed to make friends with other blind people, to ask them questions about how they spent their lives. Soon I began receiving phone calls from blind men and women who had heard my request. One day I had a phone call from someone called Steve, who had been blind since 1975. 

We became very close, talking every day, and it wasn’t long before we realised we had met before, when we were both sighted. Twelve years earlier, I had been driving and had run out of petrol. Steve stopped to help me on the roadside; it was love and first sight for both of us, but due to a series of circumstances we didn’t see each other again and my heart was broken. Then came the miraculous way the Lord brought us back together again. 

Meeting Steve was the best thing God has ever done for me. We were married for 33 years but he died nearly three years ago; I’m still trying to cope with his death. I miss him so much, but life goes on. And now, as a Christian, I look forward to being reunited with him. 

Sadly two of my children also died. In 2006 my eldest son Steven died of lung cancer, but not before he came to Christ. He had been drinking heavily, and my husband Steve and I had been praying for his salvation for years. I was beginning to despair but one day in the privacy of my room, on my knees I beseeched the Lord to intervene in Steven’s life, asking that he would go to a Christian rehab. Soon after my son called me saying he felt ill and that it was probably from his drinking, and at last he was open to going to a rehab. He was accepted for the eleven-month programme at Yeldall Manor where he became a Christian and was baptised in the Holy Spirit. I just overflowed with joy.

In November 2024, my daughter Tracie died of cirrhosis of the liver. I couldn’t understand the reason and I still don’t fully understand why. I cried out to God to ask why he had taken two of my children and my husband, and why he allowed me to become blind. I just felt I had had too many losses. We know the Lord moves in mysterious ways, but this was too much; I didn’t want to handle it. 

I have been reminded of Job, who also experienced many losses but the Lord gave him back more than he had lost and I know that when I am in his kingdom, this is what God will do for me. This is what keeps me going.

I know that God answers prayers. I know, too, that he is a merciful God, and I hold on to that.

Geraldine has written about her life story in Blind Faith, which is available on Amazon.