Rick Warren Recovering; Burned Eyes 'Just A Little Fuzzy,' Says Wife

Mega-pastor Rick Warren, who last week alarmed followers when he asked for prayers to recover his sight after his eyes were burned by sap while clearing brush, is making a speedy recover, according to his wife.

"His eyes are just a little fuzzy," Kay Warren on Monday told Christianity Today, the leading evangelical periodical. She said her husband is able to drive and hasn't been in pain since Friday.

Last Thursday, Warren sent out a Tweet saying only that his eyes had been "severely burned by a toxic poison" on Monday and that he had been blinded. "Excruciating pain. Now home. Pray my sight loss is restored."

That sent a frisson of fear through Warren's flock, which stretches from the Southern California mega-church that he founded 30 years ago with his wife to people in countries around the globe who have become Warren devotees, thanks to his best-selling books and his peripatetic travels to train other pastors.

Warren's publicist, A. Larry Ross, quickly clarified that Warren, an avid gardener, was pruning a firestick plant in his yard a week ago when got some sap on his hands, wiped his brow and "immediately experienced excruciating pain in both eyes." His wife called 911 and an emergency squad rushed him to Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, Calif., where he stayed overnight before his release on Tuesday.

In a subsequent Tweet on Thursday, Warren wrote: "May God use this pain for his glory. Rom. 8:28." But then he indicated that he was improving: "A doctor put protective contacts on my corneas as bandages during the healing," he wrote. "I am NOT blind. Thank you."

That had been all until Kay Warren's update on Monday.

"The amount of agony was so extreme that I could not believe his eyes were not destroyed," Kay Warren told CT's Sarah Pulliam Bailey. "He's definitely better and almost completely back to normal."