If I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again – I love history and music. I love learning how masterpieces and hymns came to be composed. It began when I learned that Beethoven composed some of the world’s most magnificent symphonies and concertos when he was deaf. How is that even possible? Well, here’s another history lesson for you.
It was March 24, 1820, in southeast New York. A baby girl was born with perfect bright blue eyes. Six weeks later, those eyes became inflamed with a minor, treatable, ailment in infants. The local doctor applied a hot mustard poultice directly to the baby’s eyes. It was the wrong treatment. Within days, the baby’s eyes were scarred irreparably. For this child the world went dark. She would never see again. The doctor was devastated and for the rest of his life he carried the weight of that mistake, “one of the great sorrows of his life.”
Despite the doctor’s mistake having blinded this child at six weeks old, she grew and spent the rest of her life thanking him for it. Seventy years later, Fanny Crosby wrote about what she would tell that doctor if she could meet him: “Thank you, thank you—over and over again—for making me blind, if it was through your agency that it came about!” She meant it. Not as bitter sarcasm. Not as religious performance. She genuinely believed her blindness was a gift.
“It was no mistake of God’s,” she wrote. “I verily believe it was His intention that I should live my days in physical darkness, so as to be better prepared to sing His praises and incite others so to do. I could not have written thousands of hymns—many of which are sung all over the world—if I had been hindered by the distractions of seeing all the interesting and beautiful objects that would have been presented to my notice.”
When Fanny was only one year old, her father died. Her mother, Mercy, was now left alone with a blind infant and no income in rural New York. Instead of being the beginning of tragedy, it became the foundation of something extraordinary. Mercy Crosby made a decision: blindness would not mean helplessness. Her daughter would have a full life.
Mercy took work as a maid in nearby towns, often gone for days at a time, working brutal hours to keep food on the table. Fanny’s grandmother, Eunice, moved in to care for the child. Eunice became more than a caretaker. She became Fanny’s window to the world. She described everything: the color of the sky at sunset, the shape of leaves, the way snow looked falling on bare branches, the patterns on butterfly wings, the expressions on people’s faces. She described not just what things looked like, but what they meant—the stories behind them, the feelings they evoked.
Fanny absorbed every word as she grew up. She had an extraordinary memory—nearly photographic, except she’d never seen a photograph. She stored every description, every detail, every image her grandmother painted with words. Later in life, Fanny would say these vivid descriptions became the foundation of her imagination. She could “see” things in her mind more clearly than many sighted people saw with their eyes.
But Eunice gave Fanny something even more valuable than descriptions: she gave her the Bible.
Not in braille—braille wouldn’t be widely available in America for decades. Eunice read aloud, and Fanny memorized. By age ten, Fanny had committed to memory the first four books of the Old Testament, all four Gospels, many of the Psalms, all of Proverbs, the Song of Solomon, and large portions of other books. She could recite entire chapters perfectly, word for word.
Her mother Mercy’s influence was different but equally profound. Mercy embodied endurance, perseverance, dignity in hard work. She never complained. She never pitied her daughter. She simply worked, relentlessly, to give Fanny opportunities. And Fanny learned: life might be hard, but you keep going. You find joy where you can. You make something of what you’re given.
Yes, Fanny was eight years old — blind since infancy. But she had already decided: blindness would not define her as broken.
Fanny strived for more than merely being content. She wanted education — to learn, to grow, to do something meaningful with her life. Then Fanny learned about the New York Institute for the Blind in Manhattan—one of the first schools for blind students in America. She could study there. Learn music, literature, mathematics, be trained, educated, prepared for a real life. But since her family had no money, the prospect of education seemed impossible. So Fanny prayed for five years. Finally, at age fifteen, word came: she’d been accepted in the school . Somehow, the money had been arranged.
Fanny later wrote about the moment she learned she was going to school: “Only a few words, but what a flood of joy they admitted to the poor sad little soul that had so long pined and prayed for knowledge! God had responded to my prayer, at last—through His own means, and by His own faithful helpers. Oh, if the founders and sustainers of such institutions could only know a millionth part of the joy they cause, they would feel repaid for their money and their efforts—again and again.”
At the Institute, Fanny thrived. She studied music, became an accomplished harpist and singer. She wrote poetry constantly. She taught other students. She became such a fixture at the school that she stayed for twenty-three years—first as a student, then as a teacher.
But it was after leaving the Institute, in her forties, that Fanny’s true calling emerged. She began writing hymns. She would compose them in her mind—complete with melody and multiple verses—then dictate them to someone who could write them down. She rarely revised. The hymns came fully formed. And over the next fifty years, Fanny Crosby wrote between 8,000 and 9,000 hymns.
Let that number sink in: eight to nine thousand hymns.
If you’ve ever been to a church, you’ve sung Fanny Crosby’s words:
• “Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine”
• “To God Be the Glory”
• “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior”
• “Rescue the Perishing”
• “Safe in the Arms of Jesus”
• “All the Way My Savior Leads Me”
• “Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross”
Fanny wrote so many hymns that she literally had to hide how productive she was. But she never wrote for fame or money. She earned very little from her hymns—publishers paid poorly, and Fanny didn’t fight for royalties. She wrote because she believed her words could help people find faith, hope, comfort in dark times. She wrote because she believed this was why God had made her blind.
Fanny Crosby never saw a single sunrise … never saw a face … never saw the words to her own hymns written on a page. Yet she spent ninety-four years insisting that blindness had been a blessing. She made a choice about what her blindness would mean.
Quite often what looks like tragedy becomes the very thing that makes your life matter. The wound becomes the gift. The darkness is where you learn to sing. The miracles of music begins with listening to God speaking to your heart!
Tagged: hymns and music, perseverance, prayer, words matter
