A New Way to See
Your eyes are windows into your body.
If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light.
If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a musty cellar.
If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have!
-Matthew 6:22-23
Stage 1 of The Great Spectacle Debacle began in the Year of our Lord 2016, November. For the first time since my late teens, I was on a mission to get a new pair of glasses. My old ones were scratched and worn and reminded me of my previous stage of life—one that encompassed the end of high school, college, and a failed marriage. It was time for a change, but I was on my own and nearly broke from paying for rent and groceries while living in Seattle and working for a non-profit. Unable to afford vision insurance, I was paying out of pocket for an optometry appointment (how does this make sense) and I wanted to make. it. count., which meant leaving with a new pair of glasses and a whole new outlook on life. After updating my prescription, the optometrist showed me to an “affordable” lenses rack of about 15 frames. I chose a rectangular dark tortoise shell pair that were called Gotham. I hoped maybe Batman vibes would give me courage in my newly divorced, fresh-out-of-grad-school, emotionally turbulent mental health counselor stage of life. At the time, it felt as though I was choosing a new pair of lenses through which to see the world. More than anything, I wanted to see healing, redemption—some semblance of purpose for the past season of my life. I had survived, but I wanted to know why. Slowly, God opened my eyes to let in a little more light.
Stage 1.5 occurred in 2020, two years in to marriage with Drew and 6 months into the global pandemic. I had left my counseling job and was in an in-between place in a new season of life, ready for a new pair of glasses. My prescription had changed and it was getting difficult to see through what I can only describe as cat scratches and flaking UV coating across the surface of my lenses. My mother graciously attributes my tendency to destroy things and run into walls and occasionally treat other vehicles like bumper cars as “low spacial awareness.” I call it something else. My Gothams had served me well but it was time to move into a brighter stage of life. During that season, I was re-figuring out who I was as an abuse and trauma survivor, as a not-counselor, as a wife for the second time. It was difficult for me to make any decision with confidence, because what if I got it wrong again? What if I made another bad choice that ruined the course of my life? Playing it safe to a paralyzing degree, I spent the next three years looking for a new pair of glasses—sending a new slew of selfies featuring me in various frames every 4 months or so to a small group of family and friends along with one word: “Help.” Honestly, I was annoying myself.
As of May 2024, I have entered Stage 2 of The Great Spectacle Debacle with heightened boldness. Tired of my indecision, I marched 4 blocks down the street to my local eye doctor one day without telling anyone or asking for anyone’s opinion and chose a new pair of frames all by myself. Okay, I sent ONE selfie to ONE person (God bless you Jeanine) but didn’t check my text messages until *after* I had chosen a new pair. This is growth, my friends. As I made the purchase, I sat sweating across from Joe the eyeglass technician and chose a mid-range lens which meant thicker glass, lower price—trying to have my budget cake and eat it too. Here is the problem: budget cake is not real cake. It is a Little Debbie cake that is thick and puffy and when you’re choking it down makes you wonder what you’re even doing here on this planet at this time and why have we all agreed with processed food in America and is America more of a theoretical concept or a tangible reality? These sorts of things.
The day finally came when the glasses I’d ordered arrived. But when I tried them on, it was like affixing the full width and weight of a minivan windshield to my face. I could hardly keep my head up. From the side, the glass bulged far past the thin metal frame, providing an unsexy goggle effect. Either way you peered through these lenses, it was like looking in a funhouse mirror, and I was the warped and chagrined bobble head just trying to see things clearly. But it had been so long since I had purchased glasses that I began to doubt myself again. “Is this just how glasses are now?” I wondered. “Has my vision changed this drastically?” Hoping to get a read on “am I crazy or do these glasses make me look crazy,” I casually debuted my new glasses over breakfast with my family last week. As I wandered about the kitchen, wondering if anyone would notice, my little brother looked up from frying bacon and asked, “Why are your lenses so thick?” “I KNEW IT!” I shouted. “I’M NOT CRAZY!” I determined to find another path forward.
This week, I trudged the four blocks to my optometrist with sheepish trepidation. “How do I say, ‘These just aren’t working for me; it hurts to hold my head up; their gargantuan proportions are evoking public commentary’ in a firm yet professional manner?” I wondered. I got so nervous that I would offend the entire office and be stuck with these monstrosities forever that I actually choked with a weird Looney-tunes style “Gulp!” when the kind lady at the front desk asked me my name. Noticing my panic, she asked, “Is it Katie?” “It’s Katelyn!” I said with a great deal more force than I intended. “Oh. I was close!” She said. “You look like a Katie.” And she’s right. I’ve been called Katie my whole life until I got a divorce. In much the same way I was ready to re-define myself with a new pair of glasses in 2016, I began introducing myself as Katelyn around the same time. Katie hadn’t done so well in the last decade. But recently, as I’ve heard my dear Grammy struggle with whether to call me “Katelyn” or “Katie,” I’ve begun to admit to myself, “I want to be Katie again. Maybe it’s safe now.” I still like being Katelyn, but I no longer want to leave Katie behind in the past. As my thighs stuck to the plastic waiting room chair, I pondered these things in my heart—like Mary, but with more of an Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret vibe.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, my encounter with the eyeglasses technician was nothing short of delightful. With a fresh outpouring of sweat cascading down my back, I pulled my new pair out of a brown paper bag and explained the issue to Joe, who shared my concern.
“Hmm…they are a bit wide,” he conceded. “And yes, your prescription with that glass makes the lens this thick. Lovely frame though.”
“I like them,” I said. “But I think the metal and the glass make them heavier than I can deal with.”
“Would you like help picking out new frames?” he asked.
I hesitated, then answered with largest dose of the humility I’ve ever swallowed as an impossibly individualistic, ‘I’ll do it all by myself, thank you very much’ individual.
“I welcome any help you have to offer.”
I told Joe I liked rounder, natural-colored frames that work with a narrow head.
“How about these?” he asked playfully, handing me a pair of gigantic round marbled teal frames.
“I think these make me look like a High School Musical character” I said, and we both laughed.
Then Joe handed me a clear plastic purple pair. Out of respect for his contribution, I tried them on and said to both of our reflections in the mirror, “I’m not that girl” with great solemnity.
“It’s okay that you know what you like,” he shrugged. “You seem to like the tortoise shell,” he observed, referencing a round tortoise shell pair with gold earpieces I had tried on three times already.
And that’s when two important realizations hit me at once:
1. I know what I like?! I know what I like. Hm.
2. Maybe I don’t need to redefine myself any more.
Maybe healing and redemption are not about crafting a new me, but receiving a new way to see the old me. Maybe I just like round tortoise shell glasses with gold accents and I don’t need to choose something bold or dramatic, as well-meaning friends and family had suggested in the past. Maybe good old plastic tortoise shell is enough. Maybe I’m enough. I was returning the dramatic pair with a flair that I had chosen in May, because deep down I knew that my choice was more about wanting a new image than a new way to see. This time, I want to see and be seen as just me. This time, I am ready to see and love myself as spectacularly un-spectacular.
“I don’t want to be basic, but also I kind of do,” I told Saint Joe. And he just smiled.
*
In each season, I was looking for a new view—of myself, God, and others. But God was more interested in changing the way I see than changing what I see. I’ve never been content with who I am as a person in one place, always believing that the thing I’m searching for is “out there” and that I’ll know it when I see it. But I was wrong. Now I see that Joy is right here, in front of my near-sighted blurry eyes, dancing on the grass and running through the sprinkler, just waiting for me to join in. And not just the person I’ve become as a result of suffering and sanctification, but all of me—the me who used to climb trees and wade through creek beds. The me who got teased for having glasses and braces in middle school. The me who tried to hold it all together as my life was falling apart. The me who gets angry and says mean things. The me who is learning to love her not-perfectly-flat stomach and the grey hairs beginning to grow around my temples. Katie and Katelyn, Past and Present. I don’t know what the future holds, but in this next season I want to stop trying so hard to find it. Instead, I want the courage to wait as the Future comes looking for me, like a child giggling in her hiding spot, waiting for her parent to come find her in a game of Hide and Seek.
This year for the first time, birthday cards from my wonderful family-in-law were all addressed to Katie instead of Katelyn—a realization that brought tears to my eyes. Though I never acknowledged it out loud, they somehow sensed that I’m ready to be Katie, too, again. They saw me with a new way of seeing, and I am so grateful. I want to see me with new old eyes, too.
So here’s to learning to see our whole selves with newfound grace.
Here’s to looking for joy and contentment wherever our feet may be.
Here’s to beholding ourselves and others with the confidence that comes from unashamedly, wholeheartedly agreeing that we are seen, we are known, we are loved, and that is enough.
Amen.
Going Deeper: Listen to The Strength to Let Go by Switchfoot.
With the stumbling beat of my heart and my feet,
And the faults of my failure and pain
To think all of this time,
I had wings that were ready to soar
Give me the strength to let go
Give me the strength to surrender
Give me the strength to stop holding on
I've been holding on so long
Give me the strength to let go
And show me the way to come home.
P.s. This will be my final post for the Summer, but I plan to resume in September. Thank you for reading and for being here; it brings me deep joy and fills me with gratitude to be journeying Homeward with you. You are loved, you are loved, you are loved beyond measure.