Topnotch Painter Who Is Legally Blind Shares How He Is Overcoming Adversity With Grace
Timothy Chambers is legally blind, but that doesn't prevent him from excelling, quite ironically, in his chosen craft: painting.
How could a man with only 10 percent of normal vision still do exquisite works of art?
In an op-ed piece for The Gospel Herald, Chambers says he is painting even better portraits now despite having been diagnosed with Usher syndrome, a disorder that deprives him of peripheral vision.
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He says he is able to do this by facing adversity with grace and strength.
In an interview with Medium.com last year, the award-winning artist said his vision is "about 15 degrees in each eye" while normal vision "is about 110 degrees in each eye."
The hereditary disease also affects his hearing. "My hearing is about 20 percent of normal hearing; I can hear vowels, but not consonants. So I depend on lip reading. I can read a lot better than I can hear, so I am very thankful for text messages," he said then.
Chambers admits that having the disease makes life quite challenging. "But it also makes me appreciate what I can see, hear, and do. More importantly, it forces me to trust God with each moment I am given," he says.
He recalls the time when his doctor told him that he was going blind and that he had to find another profession.
That prognosis troubled him for the next two years, and he imagined himself "sitting in a La-Z-Boy all day doing nothing."
Fortunately, his wife, Kim, gave him a good "kick in the pants" that made him change his outlook in life. She told him, "You're behaving like your life is over."
He then persevered to overcome his vision deficiency. "You just have to put one foot in front of the other," he says.
Even though he is losing more of his vision each passing day, Chambers says he tries not to focus on the unknown future. "I just take one step at a time," he says.
He says he wants to prove people wrong when they say that what he's doing is impossible.
He says despite his handicap, he is not only continuing to produce paintings but he's doing carpentry and remodeling their bathroom as well.
"I'm trying to live by the Jonathan Swift quote, 'May you live all the days of your life.' I want to make sure I'm truly alive in every moment," he says.
