eye stylus

Over the course of an entire weekend, because we are tired parents and cannot commit to a three-hour movie in one sitting, my husband and I watched the Godfather. The violent scenes were few, but unwitnessed: I would bury my face in Timothy’s shoulder and ask “can I look can I look when is it over is it over yet?” The same face-burrowing happened a few weeks earlier, when we watched the Patriot. I have no stomach for blood.

Sadly, my squeamishness is not confined only to gory scenes in movies. I can’t handle reality. And that is when it becomes a real problem.

When she was eight months old, my daughter knocked over my Yeti mug of boiling hot coffee and badly burned her wrist and hand. I called my mom. I couldn’t look at the wound. Even now, I’m not sure if the image I have of skin peeling off her hand like the membrane on a hardboiled egg is real, or if it’s one I’ve conjured after years of telling the story (she seems fascinated by this unremembered ordeal). At the hospital, I couldn’t understand why no one moved with more urgency. My daughter was burned! And I was hysterical. 

For her healing, we had to wash her hand twice daily and reapply bandages that inevitably stuck to her oozing wound. I would hold her under the faucet and look away. It’s hard to care for a burn that you can’t face. I would fasten a diaper over her hand when I was finished, to protect her. Then I could look. Then, I wasn’t afraid.

A year or so later, my daughter was darting through the house like one of those little birds running on the beach. Legs flying instead of wings, so fast you can’t really see them moving. She was like that, and then she looked over her shoulder and crashed into the sharp edge of our dining room table. I’m so grateful she is short, or it would have hit her eyeball. Instead, the skin right underneath split wide open. 

The hand burn had not bolstered my fortitude. In that moment, I melted. I don’t know who I called or what happened after that, but the gaping spot right under her eye—and I am terrible with eyes—was grotesque. We landed in a plastic surgeon’s office. A swarm of nurses flooded the tiny room and while most of them held my daughter in place while she screamed, a few came and consoled me while I cried. 

I was not worried about my daughter. She was in good hands. I just couldn’t handle the gruesomeness.

And then, last week, my husband left for work. Only for one night. Not long enough for me to be sad, but long enough for me to have an entire day to let the kids make mud puddles and bounce on the trampoline while I tried to wrangle the house into decent shape. I was looking forward to it, this day of frantic cleaning.

I had my plan: kids do their chores, then go outside while I perfect their work and complete my own. It was a Friday. We had nothing on our agenda. I love days like this. I don’t mind having a list of to-dos; striking through each task strikes joy in me. And the peace of Saturday dangled like a carrot before my eyes: a date with my son to a bakery, a hike on a cooler August afternoon, takeout sushi and leftover wine after the kids fall asleep. I could get there, to that sunny and unhurried day, if I could plow through Friday first. And that meant scouring the house while the garden hose turned our yard into a swamp and the kids bounced and flailed on the trampoline.

My plan was a good one. It was realistic, when most of my goals are idealistic. An entire day, nothing devoted to the hours except sorting through board game pieces, Legos, microscopic Calico Critter dresses, and tangles of Pretty Pretty Princess jewelry. 

In my daughter’s room, I noticed her little writing pad wedged into the shelf in her corner. Drawing utensils belong in the office/schoolroom, not with her stacks of little boxes and Polly Pockets. I grabbed the pad. The stylus, attached to a small bungee cord, was trapped beneath the rubble of toys. I pulled. The stylus snapped free and slapped into my eyeball like a slingshot.

At first, it only hurt. I did not panic. Pain in itself does not frighten me. 

I carried on.

In the bathroom, I glanced at my eye. All I saw was red. And then all I imagined was a deflated eyeball oozing slime and blood all over the sink. I saw myself with a gaping hole in my head. A patch. A part of my own body I could not bear myself to see. 

With my daughter’s hand and eye, I managed to get by. I could look away, at least to some degree.

Not now.

A few hours later, after my brother graciously traded in a day of work to babysit my kids while I rushed to the eye doctor, I was back at home with nothing more than eye drops in my bag. My cornea was scratched, my eyeball bruised. But there was no terrible damage. It looked worse than it was. 

God, in his kindness, both derailed my carefully made plans and protected my eyeball. He took away the glory I’d get for cleaning my house and kept me from serious harm. I lost my time to clean. I did not lose my sight.

But maybe my problem is my lack of sight in the first place. I don’t want to look. I don’t want to see the blood, the flesh, the gaping wound, the peeling skin, the red eyeball. 

We come to faith through hearing the gospel—he who has ears to hear, let him hear!—not by seeing the gospel.[1] Our faith is not by sight.[2]

But that does not mean we don’t need our eyes; we just don’t need them for our salvation.

I shy away from the grotesque. I cringe at the the sight of blood. But the gospel is gory, is it not? There is no good news without wounds.[3] And maybe the good news is not only this—that Jesus and suffered and died—but it is certainly part of it. 

And should the bad news not send me shuddering? Maybe that’s easier to ignore. The eyes of my heart can close and the rest of me keeps functioning. I can avoid looking into the crannies of my inner self; whatever bitterness, contempt, envy, or ungratefulness has collected there may be bad, but at least it’s not bloody. 

It is gross, though. Sin is not abstract. It is heinous. And maybe I have greater problems than squeamishness; maybe I have a warped view of what is actually disturbing. I can’t handle a horse’s head in the Godfather, but I can handle frustration at my husband for changing our Saturday plans. I can’t stomach my daughter’s split open flesh, but I can accept my anger when my children won’t sleep and act hysterically as a result.

I need a stronger stomach for both the things within and the things without.

And I need to do more than look in and see what filth remains, don’t I? I need to look up. Maybe we hear the gospel with our ears. Maybe we behold his glory with our eyes.

[1] Matt 11:15, Rom 10:17

[2] 2 Cor 5:7

[3] 1 Peter 2:24