When words fail, your Eyes will speak

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“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.”

Eyes have always fascinated me. When looking into someone’s eyes, so much can be understood. It is easy to hide behind a smile, or a fake demeanor. With actions, words, expressions, etc. I can fool anyone into thinking that I am emoting differently on the exterior in opposition to my internal reality. I read body language fairly well and even had a psychologist tell me I am a room scanner, I can look around a room and tell friend from foe. I notice body language and study it. He thought my anxiety was part of the reason I did this. It was a fear of saying or approaching someone the wrong way.

The more I began to understand this, the more I tuned into it. Folks that have battled in their life journey find a way to hide parts of themselves and try to fool others into thinking they are doing better than they are. I think of creative people that although may not be the best “Christian example,” made me laugh and made me feel good. When Robin Williams was found after taking his life, I was very sad. I remember thinking to myself, “This is so tragic, yet I am not surprised. For someone that wanted to bring joy to others through his comedy and his enthusiasm for life, he had sadness and darkness in his eyes. Something in his eyes made me concerned for him.” Some of his loved ones say that he used humor to make people laugh because he didn’t want others to feel the sadness and depression he dealt with. I then thought to myself, I get that logic. There is this internal want to bring joy and laughter to others, especially if I sense an internal struggle.

Being that person that likes to meet new people, often I find myself trying to make eye contact with them when they are speaking to me. I like to watch their eyes and see what their eyes are saying to me versus what their words may be. Even with my closest friends, I watch their eyes, because I want to know if I am getting a certain piece of their story. It is never done with the intent of “Ah-Ha! I caught you in a lie.” I get that there is this self-consciousness that goes into being open and vulnerable. There is a trust issue that can prevent wanting to be 100% open to our life events.

I have been open about my struggles with mental health. It isn’t a part of my life I am proud of by any means. It just is what it is. I learn from it. The previous blog I mentioned a bible study pal, Mama Gayle. During one of our Tuesday Bible Study days, she said to me part way through, “You aren’t okay today.”

I said, “What do you mean, I’m fine.”

Mama Gayle said, “Your willingness to look me in the eye today is noticeably less than normal. You normally look at me when I am talking to you. You look away or look down at times when you respond. Today it has mostly been looking away for both. What is going on inside?”

As I sat there in silence Mama Gayle said to me, “I can see in your eyes something is off.”

It shook me. I wasn’t sure what to say. I wasn’t sure I wanted to verbalize the internal struggle that had me so numb that emotion in general couldn’t be identified. I honestly wish I remembered how that conversation ended, but I don’t. It probably ended in tears from me, but I have blocked the ending out of my mind, yet another defense mechanism.

There are personality studies that coincide with the eyes and eye contact. When doing the chaplain residency, personality theory was a unit of study. There was a personality test each one of us had to take. The breakdown of my personality based on this test was spot on! In fact, I recently looked up my personality in relation to eye contact. I am what is known as an ENFJ (Extraverted, iNtuitive, Feeling, Judging) personality. When it comes to masking feelings with humor, Scott Stafford wrote: ENFJ want to appear strong and somewhat perfect to those around them, struggling to really expose their own weaknesses. When they are upset or hurting over something, it might be hard for them to express this. They don’t want it to seem like they are weak, or like they are failing to overcome these struggles. When the ENFJ wants to deflect, they do sometimes use humor as a way to express those feelings without it being obvious. They also use wit as a means of deflecting, but for them having constant distractions can be an even better method of ignoring those feelings.

Right on the money with me. Then I go back to a scripture from Matthew 6. Verse 22 says, ““The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.” What does this mean? Light comes into the body through our eyes. If we have no eyesight, it would be like living in a dark world. Generosity and kindness bring light into our lives. When we live with the light of God working within us, we will shine the light of God to others. When we live in a way that is not generous, not kind, or we live in a selfish manner, we will be full of darkness. Misery=darkness. No matter what is going on in our lives, Jesus tells us we have two options:

1. We can turn our eyes on heavenly things, welcoming in light for us that we can then share the light with others

2. Focus on earthly things, welcoming in darkness and destruction to ourselves.

God wants the truth from us, no matter what we are going through. Yes, our Divine Creator knows all things. That doesn’t mean that we are allowed to skip things we are feeling and thinking when talking with God. It is through complete honesty with God and with ourselves that we can begin to work on recognizing the light in our eyes and maybe, just maybe, learning to look for the light in others. If we become more aware of the story our eyes tell, then we might be able to notice the story in others. By recognizing the hidden story in other’s eyes, we might become that support system they desperately need.