Tuesday, August 21, 2007
OASIS Group Hears Tony Crow View Life Through Philippians 4:13
TINNEY TALK: Observations by Joe Dan Boyd
SINCE LOSING HIS SIGHT four and a half years ago, Tony Crow views the world through Philippians 4:13 (NKJV): I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me, a New Testament verse that Tony says is tattooed on the surface of his artificial eye! “The words are with me always, and I believe them. Without Christ, I wouldn’t be here today.”
“HERE” WAS TINNEY CHAPEL’s Family Life Center, where Tony recalled, for the church’s OASIS group, an unforgettable Valentine’s Day during a West Texas quail hunt in 2003, when a stray pattern of birdshot splattered across his unprotected eyes, darkening his world forever.
THAT TRAGIC HUNTING ACCIDENT was, for a time, an even darker day for Tony’s son Landon, who had aimed and fired in Tony’s direction only because his father had earlier told him that he would be moving up a nearby fence row. Tony’s arbitrary change of planned location, without informing Landon, changed both lives, dramatically.
“BUT I WAS NEVER ANGRY AT MY SON,” emphasizes Tony, who concedes that he wore neither safety glasses to protect his eyes nor orange-hued body markers to enhance his visibility to Landon and other hunters. When he learned that he would never see again, confirmed by two operations on each eye, Tony knew he could not let it get him down permanently, in part because he realized how heavy the situation weighed on Landon, who had already declined professional counseling for help in dealing with having fired the shot that blinded his father.
LANDON’S ATTITUDE TOWARD HIMSELF CHANGED only when Rudy entered their lives, and he saw the big German Shepherd Leader Dog restore much of Tony’s independence, guiding his father from house to barn, allowing him to resume many farm chores and even travel (with wife Cheryl and Rudy) all over the country as an in-demand motivational speaker with a strong Christian witness testimony.
“BUT IT HAS NOT BEEN EASY,” admits Tony, who says he still cries sometimes, and doesn’t mind admitting it. “Sometimes I still wonder why it happened to me, and then I remember that Jesus, while on the Cross, asked why God had forsaken Him: If Jesus could ask why, then you and I can ask why.”
