Growing Up with Glasses and an Eye Injury
I visited the optometrist this week for the first time in a few years. Just a routine appointment since I’ve worn glasses for over thirty years—ever since an eye injury as a toddler. My life, in many ways, has been lived through lenses.
Through New Eyes – James B. Jordan
One of the most formative books I’ve ever read is Through New Eyes by James B. Jordan. In it, Jordan explores how the Bible teaches us to see the world symbolically and theologically—to read creation itself as a kind of divine language. That idea resonated with me because I’ve quite literally seen the world differently since I was three years old. My injured right eye has always filtered the world with distortions—blurry, tinted, off-balance. So the phrase “rose-colored glasses” has never felt like just a metaphor to me; it’s been a real, lived experience. I’ve known since childhood that our vision—our frame—changes everything. Jordan’s book helped me understand that this was also spiritual. The way we frame reality, the lenses we inherit or choose, deeply affect how we interpret everything: Scripture, nature, suffering, even ourselves.
As a kid, those optometrist visits were part of the rhythm of life. Getting a new pair of glasses was always exciting—partly because I was hard on them. In elementary school, it was baseballs or roughhousing that would break them. Later, it was falling asleep with them on, or carelessly tossing them on a couch. I’ve had name-brand frames, off-brand backups, and contact lenses that never quite worked. Today, I keep it simple: order online, reimburse myself with my HSA, and keep backups in case one pair goes rogue.
But behind the routine is a story that shaped not just my vision—but my sense of self.
A Cat, a Scratch, a Lifetime of Glasses
The injury happened when I was just three years old—the same age as my own son Ambrose now. My dad was doing a side job, pouring concrete for a homeowner on the outskirts of Sacramento. My mom stopped by briefly and then left me with my dad.
That’s when I saw the cat.
It was probably feral, a stray lurking around the property. I followed it into the bushes and reached toward it. In a flash, it swiped at my face, clawing directly across my right eye. I don’t remember the pain, just the shock and the scream. My dad scooped me up in a panic—without a car, without a plan—and somehow got me to the hospital. My next clear memory is the bandage over my eye, and my Aunt Marie bringing me pink popcorn.
The scratch had nearly drained my eye, and the doctors had to stitch the cornea. Pigment from the iris stained the cornea, and the shape of my eye was forever changed—peaked and misshapen from the wound. I never wore the post-op patch like I was supposed to, and from that moment on, glasses became a constant companion.
More Than Just a Look
There’s a cultural trope that smart people wear glasses. And maybe, as a kid, I embraced that myth as a coping mechanism. I grew up as a Power Rangers kid, but I didn’t see myself as the red or green Power Ranger—I was Billy, for Halloween I dressed as the blue one. He wore glasses. He was the smart one. So maybe I leaned into that identity, even as I wrestled with what it meant to be seen differently.
I was in the *gifted* program in my school, but I often wondered if people thought I was smart because of my glasses since I always felt like I wasn’t really gifted. I’ve always had major imposter syndrome—even as a kid. I wondered If they saw the glasses and assumed. The injury had affected my depth perception and balance. I struggled in sports, especially with those giant plastic frames slipping down my nose or getting wedged under a batting helmet. Lots of strike outs. I never felt quite at home or particularly adept. But I would’ve been farsighted either way, glasses were always going to be part of my life, as evidenced by the prescription in my uninjured eye.
And yet, not wearing them wasn’t really an option. I couldn’t see the board, the screen, or the other side of the room. I once left my glasses in a mailbox during a summer water fight and forgot they were there for weeks—until the mailman handed them back to my mom. In high school, I tried contacts, but they irritated my scarred cornea so badly I gave up.
Crooked Frames and Quiet Resolve
We didn’t always have money for new glasses. Sometimes they’d be JB-welded together by my dad, or taped up with a thick wad of scotch tape. I can still remember the humiliation of wearing crooked glasses in school pictures or struggling to fix them without being able to see well enough to find the screw.
When I left home at 19, I did so with a pair of glasses on their last leg—literally. One arm had broken off, and I once drove from Tucson to Los Angeles with them balanced on one ear. But I made it.
Later, while working at the State Capitol, I had the best vision insurance of my life. I finally saw high-resolution images of my eye’s internal damage. The ophthalmologist warned me that the pressure in that eye might get worse with age, but for now, it’s stable. I still remember the optician looking up my insurance and saying, “Actually… you can have anything you want.” After years of picking from the cheapest drawer of black or gray plastic, I walked out with designer frames and every upgrade imaginable. I wore those with pride for years.
The week I was scheduled to preach my first “pastoral search” sermon at Saint Paul’s in Los Altos—my now-home church—those glasses broke. A screw popped out just as I pulled to the church that very morning, maybe from one of my kids, or maybe because I fell asleep holding them. I had to preach without being able to read my notes, squinting at the Prayer Book, half-blind but somehow making it through on memory.
There was always a hope that one day I’d get my eyes “fixed.” I went in for a LASIK consultation years ago, only to be told I wasn’t a candidate. The damage was too severe. Still, I hold out hope that technology might one day restore some of the vision in my right eye. Maybe one day I’ll see color correctly in both eyes, or experience true binocular vision.
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