Developing Eyes for the Invisible 

A few weeks ago, I stopped by my local pharmacy, hoping to quickly grab a Father’s Day card for my husband. As I was considering my options based on what was left on the racks, a woman about my mother’s age came up behind me.

The woman reached for a cartoon one, then a pop-up version, but frowned, and put back card after card. I assumed she couldn’t find the sentiment she was looking for. Then I inferred that she must be buying a card for her husband behind her and she didn’t want him to see it. The well-dressed man stayed a few steps back, smiling with his arms patiently folded in front of him. 

Finally, the woman asked me to read the cards for her. Leaning in with a heavy whisper, I read several into her ear. Returning each card to the rack, she muttered something about macular degeneration, followed by, “It’s terrible to get old. ”  She then began enumerating what she could no longer do. I said, “I understand,” thinking my heart failure made me more like her than she realized. She answered, “No, you don’t…just wait.”

Determined to be helpful, I pointed out another card and read it to her. She nodded, then handed it to her husband. He read the Father’s Day message out loud as happy tears slipped down his cheek. The woman turned to me and said, “It’s perfect. Thank you. He’ll forget what he read by Sunday.”

INVISIBLE TYPES OF ILLNESSES

Right up until the end of that encounter, I thought I understood. But this woman was dealing with much more than met the eye, even the observant eye.

Invisible illness is rampant. Nearly half of Americans live with a chronic (long-term, incurable) illness, like dementia, arthritis, or depression. Ninety-six percent of those chronic illnesses are invisible. Before I was assigned one, I was not aware of how prevalent this secret suffering is. Or maybe I chose to ignore it.

Nearly half of Americans live with a chronic illness.
Ninety-six percent of those are invisible.

Heart failure is a form of chronic illness. Since heart failure is progressive, it is often invisible until the very last stages. Since my diagnosis, I have been looked at with a questioning eye many times:

• At my daughter’s college, from the visitor’s desk attendant when I asked for a permit to park closer to her dorm so I could avoid the insurmountable hills while moving her in;

• At the Acropolis in Greece, from the ticket taker telling me the elevator was just for handicapped people, not for people like me;

• At courthouse security, from the guard assuming my Life Vest Cardiac Defibrillator battery pack was a contraband camera and instructing me to take it off; 

• At the airport, from the disapproving young mother with a baby and toddler when I could not help her retrieve luggage from the carousel.

By living through these encounters, I’ve learned that a person can look healthy and not be. And this makes the burden even heavier. Someone can appear just fine while suffering, which forces them to defend their actions or prove they’re ill, all the while trying to rise above it and carry on with life.

To make it even more confusing to the onlooker, invisible illness ebbs and flows in severity. On a hot summer day, I look with envy at the handicap parking spaces at Wal-Mart. On another day, I might walk a slow mile for recreation. Many days I am surprised that I make it through the day. Other days I can forget I’m ill at all. But then there’s always the nagging knowing with the chronic type of invisible illness that you’re partners for life.

A HEART ISSUE

I like to think that because I live with my own form of invisible illness, I can always see the suffering of others. I can’t. I’ve been trying to strengthen my eye for the invisible, and I have discovered it’s actually a heart issue.

In one of my favorite childhood books, The Little Prince, the author says,

“It is only in the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Christianity confirms this notion. After all, “eyes for the invisible” is what all of faith requires. Not seeing things that aren’t there, but fully seeing what is. Believing with the heart the evidence of things unseen by the eyes: 

Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see. 

(Hebrews 11:1, NLT)

Our eyes alone, without the heart, were never meant to discern the full truth. As Paul said in Ephesians 1:18, we must have “the eyes of our hearts enlightened so we may know.”  Otherwise, as Jesus warned in Matthew 13, we will be seeing but never perceiving, and our hearts will become calloused.

Our eyes alone, without the heart, were never meant to discern the full truth.

A few weeks before the card incident, I was walking in our neighborhood. I was irritated that our neighbors hadn’t fixed their mailbox. It had been dangling from its one remaining screw into the street for weeks. We’d seen several people coming and going from the house as the entire property spiraled into disrepair. That day, as I walked past the rundown house, a lady about my age in a wheelchair was at the mailbox, struggling to pull it upright while holding an electric screwdriver. I’d never seen my neighbor until that moment. But my calloused heart assumed she was lazy, or irresponsible.

I immediately felt ashamed for my irritation. Then I wanted to explain why I couldn’t pick up the heavy iron post for her. I wanted to let her know that I looked healthy and uncaring but I was neither of those. And I wanted to tell her I was sorry for what I had thought. Instead, I looked away and kept walking.

SEEING THROUGH

Sometimes our hearts can become calloused because we are coping with too much input. Our brains work to manage the overwhelming amount of information we encounter every day. For convenience, and often even for survival, we put that input into categories. But when it involves people, their intent and motivation, we are in dangerous territory. 

It’s usually easier, quicker, and more efficient to classify and assume than it is to see a unique Spirit-breathed individual. To see an individual person in our crowded world, we have to slow down and often abandon our own agenda.

I think of all the times Jesus stopped His busy schedule to see and touch just one person, even knowing His time here was limited. Given Jesus’s short ministry window, with so much to do and so little time, it could have seemed expedient and wise to group and generalize people. But Jesus took time to slow down and look fully at individual people:

Too often, even as His image-bearers, we struggle imperfectly to see others. We assume and we draw an easy conclusion. We think we understand and look right through the person suffering. Our heart must be trained to see, to compensate for the times our brains stereotype too quickly, too harshly. Because in those times, we don’t see at all. As CS Lewis put it,

“To see through things is the same as not to see.”

– CS Lewis

LESSONS LEARNED

Perhaps the most important lesson I’ve learned is that, formal diagnosis or not, everyone is healing from something—emotionally, spiritually, physically. Many times the recovery-in-process can’t be seen with a passive glance.

For those of us prone to seeing through – 

Invisible illness awareness is as simple and as profound as this: Everyone deserves the same accommodation—the benefit of the doubt. The blessing of being seen in a grace-filled light, of being seen with the heart.

It might be the screaming child with a sensory disorder, the “lazy” teenager with Lupus, the grouchy retiree who lost the wife of his youth, the over-Instagramming mom battling depression, the scaling-back minister with Lyme disease, the sturdy young vet holding a sign asking for money. Very real, life-consuming battles. Gaping wounds and healing scars we can’t see.

Even realizing this, truly seeing with the heart takes intentionality and time.

For those of us suffering silently – 

When a nagging pain throbs silently beneath the surface, and the world assumes that everything is okay, know this: an invisible illness, a hidden heartache, a covered crisis, never goes unseen by our good God. 

But You know me, O Lord; You see me. 

(Jeremiah 12:3, NASB)

As the older couple walked away from that card display, I thought about my neighbor. And I saw them all again for the first time—with my heart. Their days must be challenging and long and lonely. I thought later that I missed an opportunity to ask them if they know the Lord. 

Either way, God knows them, and He sees their suffering.

Even when human hearts grow calloused.

Even when mistaken eyes peer right through.

Listen to this post read by the author HERE.

(A version of this article first appeared in the Spring 2022 Issue of The Joyful Life Magazine.)