‘Joan Brock’ gets up to face blindness, new life

“More Than Meets the Eye: The Joan Brock Story” chronicles the transformative years in the life of Joan Brock, a woman with Job-like luck and faith. Based on Brock’s autobiography of the same name, the film airs tonight at 9 on Lifetime.

A teacher at the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School, Joan at 32 goes completely, irreversibly and bafflingly blind from an extremely rare case of macular degeneration. Only three weeks after her symptoms began, she is donning sunglasses and wielding a cane. Just as she is beginning to adjust to her traumatic new state, Joan’s husband is diagnosed with an advanced brain tumor. She is left to raise their daughter Joy alone and somehow forge a new life for herself. What is remarkable about Joan is that she accepts all of these tragedies without bitterness. Instead of a “Why me?” attitude, she adopts a “Why not me?” stance, which is what allows her to thrive after life has landed such nasty sucker punches on her. And thrive she does, in unexpected ways.

Carey Lowell (“Law and Order”) gives an excellent performance as Joan, ably capturing her combination of vulnerability and stoicism. Jennifer Pisana as daughter Joy does a fine job relaying love and concern for her mother while suffering the stress of having to become her mother’s eyes.

The film manages to jerk some tears out of viewers without ever becoming sappy or sentimentalizing its subject matter. When Joan concludes that the most important things in life are those that we can’t see -- such as courage, friendship, faith and love -- this is not a Pollyanna talking, but a woman who has faced down some of the worst life could throw at her, struggled mightily, and concluded that despite all, life is a precious gift.