Review: Hope Unseen

Hope Unseen by Scotty Smiley

I came across this book while browsing through the spirituality section of one of the three libraries I use to find audiobooks. I read the first few lines of the description and was instantly drawn to read it. For those of you who don't know, I am both an ex army wife and recently a close friend of someone who is visually impaired. Reading further I noticed this to be not only by a visually impaired army officer but a Christian visually impaired army officer. I was certain I had found my next book.

This story is not a dry autobiography as some sadly turn out to be. Smiley has a killer sense of humor which came through in this novel from beginning to end. In it he tells a series of stories, both before and after his injury which left him blind, guiding the reader through his internal and external struggles and triumphs. Through his descriptions I felt I truly knew him and the others he discussed.

This book at times was a bit tough for me. As I've already mentioned I too was an army wife for a while. For this reason I empathized with Smileys wife. He describes the inevitable year long deployment and the stress and pain of separation. I have been close to others in the army wife community and know all too well how deployments work. It was refreshing to see the deployment from Smileys perspective and to see such a positive example of a strong marriage and dedicated and loving husband through a stressful deployment. I saw many examples of marriages crumbling including my own during deployment because one partner or the other did not stay true to the other or did not strive to maintain a strong emotional bond with the other despite the spotty communication. It opened up old wounds for me of being ignored and lied to about the availability or lack of availability of time and ways to communicate. It was good to see this strong soldier and husband and I hope through his book other military couples can build and nurture a strong bond trough deployment.

Also present through this book was the theme of "even the Godly fail." Smiley discusses his strength as a Christian and describes his families and his daily prayer and bible reading. Anyone reading it can see that he is a strong and dedicated Christian man, reading and praying more than most. But he still fails. He doubts his faith in a loving God and has to gain it back as the reality of his permanent blindness sinks in. He also comes to realize that though he has always had a relationship with God he had relied on his own strength to get him through. It is a beautiful story full of honesty and I am so glad Smiley found it in him to share such an intimate story with the world.