Keeping Our Eyes Fixed on Jesus

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Tomorrow is a day of new beginnings for us! My oldest son begins high school, and my younger children and I begin home schooling.

And I have been feeling afraid. Afraid and overwhelmed.

Luke has definitely been feeling better lately. He has more and more good days, and for each one of them, I give thanks!

But when a hard day, or days, come, they are still so challenging. And our summer has been so full of doctors' appointments, and just the busyness of life, that I haven't yet been able to get a clear picture of how everything is going to work, once our home schooling days begin. I have a rough schedule, but mainly, we're just going to be jumping into it. Taking a leap of faith.

I think part of my struggle also involves grief. After all, a year ago, Luke was running cross country on his school team, and it seemed new doors were opening up for him. Now, those doors have been closed, and we need to find new ones.

I trust those new doors exist. I trust the Lord is holding our hands and guiding us down this path. In my better moments, I am even excited about what this new home schooling adventure holds for our family. I am a mom who loves to be with her kids. And actually, I even love teaching them.

But I also know it will require a lot of me. Certainly the Lord will find ways of filling me, but I suspect this new adventure will require me to pour out all of myself. It will stretch me in ways I am not accustomed to being stretched. And frankly, that usually hurts.

So, how do I face this fear that keeps gripping my heart?

For the answer to this, I have to say that I am so grateful for the gift of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Yesterday, I shared this fear with our new priest, and he gave me the following suggestion: Look at Jesus as He walked upon the water. What expression was on His face? Fear? Trembling?

Of course not. On our Lord's face, we find confidence, peace, joy, reassurance, and faith.

And He invites us to share in that confidence, that peace, that joy, that assurance, and that faith.

I find it amazing that this is the theme my priest chose to share with me, because as I look back, I see this is the theme the Lord has been sharing with me all along. I wrote about it in my last blog post—how I felt Jesus inviting me to "Step out." That is so similar to Jesus inviting Peter to "Come," when he expressed a desire to walk out to Him on the water.

Peter did step out, and he did walk on water. And then, his faith faltered, and he began to sink. At least I know I am in good company, even when I falter!

And I also know Jesus offers me the same assurance He gave Peter. He did not let His friend sink in the storm and the fear. He brought him to a place of safety.

As I reflected on this story of Jesus walking on the water, and of Peter joining Him (see Mt 14), I realized a couple things that gave me great encouragement.

One: The apostles' boat was being "buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it" (Mt 14:24). Our Lord didn't call Peter to walk out toward Him upon tranquil seas. A storm was brewing; perhaps it was upon them. Dark clouds threated, and there was unrest on the water.

In other words: When the Lord calls us to step out, when He calls us to a greater faith, it will be hard. There will be many reasons for us to look around and say, "But this! But that! This is not practical! It doesn't make sense! I can't do it!"

Each one of those protestations shares one thing in common. For each of them, I am looking at the storm and deciding what its implications mean for my life.

That is not what God calls us to do. As I heard in a homily this morning (which you can listen to here; it is from Aug. 13, 2017), as as I heard the Lord speak to me in Adoration many months ago, we are called to keep our eyes, not on the storm, but on the Lord.

That is where we find confidence, peace, joy, reassurance, faith. Neither the intensity, nor the proximity, of the storm will cause His expression to waver.

He does call us to step out. And as we do so, He wants us to keep our eyes fixed on Him. And if we do so, we will stand firm as well. (That same homily discusses how important regular prayer time is in helping us keep our eyes fixed on Him.)

And two: After pondering this, I decided to dig a little deeper into the Scripture. What had occurred just before Peter asked the Lord to call him out onto the water?

Jesus had multiplied the fishes and loaves to feed the 5000. And then, the Lord sent the apostles out in their boat, while He retreated to a mountain to pray.

I think Peter had the faith to step out on to the stormy seas with our Lord, because he had just seen Jesus perform a miracle! He had just witnessed our Lord feed 5000 people with five loaves and two fish!

What?! To me, this held great significance, because in so much of my prayer time lately, I have been finding the same message again and again in Scripture. The Lord reminds His people—reminds me—that He has led His people through many challenges in the past, and He promises to continue to be with them in the future.

Time and again, I have read these verses and thought to myself, "That is why I have a blog named Kindness Remembered—because He has always been so faithful to me, and because I need to remember these things as I move forward!"

He has been with us in the past. He will be with us in the future. He is with us now. Let us keep our eyes on Him!

I once had a college professor who said that it wasn't hope if we had every reason to believe an outcome would turn out the way we wanted it. That was expectation, not hope.

And now, I believe I can say the same of faith. We're not stepping out in faith if the waters are calm and every piece of practicality we would normally turn to points in the direction of saying, "Yes, this is a safe thing to do and will lead to a positive conclusion."

As someone said to me yesterday, "Aslan is not a safe lion." (She was quoting C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. For those of you unfamiliar with these books, Aslan is a lion who represents our Savior.) In other words, our Lord is many things, but being merely safe is not one of them.

However, when we trust Him—when we cling closely to Him, we are safe, in the very deepest sense of the word. We are standing on the Rock. So let us keep our eyes fixed on His, and indeed, step out of the boat.

Since lately I have been ending posts with a song, I want to share this song today: Come, Now is the Time to Worship. It ties into this post, because it came to my mind after the Lord shared the following reassurance with me in Adoration last week: "Now is the time to trust." Indeed, that is the exact same message He seems to be sharing with Peter in the boat and with all of us, always! Let us trust, let us worship, let us seek to do His will, wherever it may lead us!

Seeing God's Big Love in Little Things

I love it when God uses little things to remind us of how big His love is for us.

I recently was running late while taking my son to a doctor's appointment at a nearby hospital. He was experiencing the extreme nausea that often accompanies delayed gastric emptying, this complicated illness we've been living with since the beginning of this year. Imagine how you would feel if, while you were experiencing an urgent desire to throw up, you had to spend an hour in the car and then sit in a doctor's office. You wouldn't just not want to go--the car ride would be like a torture chamber. When you feel extremely nauseous, you just want to stay home.

So I understand my son's discomfort. But hearing and seeing him suffer causes me suffering as well. That hour of travelling--the time from my house to the hospital, up the top of a very congested parking structure, and through the hospital and on the three different elevators we have to take to get to the office we need--exhausts me, as well. More aptly put, it breaks my heart.

I have to thank the Lord, because most weeks He grants me an abundance of grace, and patience, and peace at this part of my week. Enough to enable me to continue driving forward, despite repeated requests to go home, and sometimes, enough to carry my son into the hospital when he is too ill to support himself. Enough to keep my shoulders back and my eyes forward as I pass people, with a look in my eye I suppose says something like: "This is what we do. We care for our children." I'm certainly not the only mother at that hospital whose twelve-year-old cannot walk in by himself. One of my amazing blessings, however, is that usually, mine does.

Anyway, on this particular day, I was feeling, not grace, but rather, weakness. The appointment was important, and I felt like we needed to arrive on time. Both for my son, and also for myself. I just did not feel like I had the strength to drive slowly and patiently through the parking structure, up the many floors, and across the hospital, all while late--to an appointment so necessary to my son! It's not that I can't handle being late; it's that on this day I just felt so close to breaking.

So I asked the Lord, "Please help us not be late. Please, if there could just be an open parking space available on the lower level, it would help so much. You are the God of time, and I trust You can arrange it so that we get there on time. Please help us."

I also prayed to Padre Pio, who we already love, and who could bilocate, and therefore seemed like a reasonable person to turn to asking for a bending of the laws of physics.

This was not a prayer I would pray every day, just expecting a divine solution to my lateness. Honestly, this is not a pray I would normally pray, ever. But this day, there was something inside of me that felt it was OK to ask for this favor. There was something that made me think God wanted me to ask, and He wanted to answer.

And He did! We found an open spot just feet from the first floor entrance. In the years we have been going to this hospital, I had never seen an open spot that close! Amid much praise to God, I pulled into the space.

The blessings didn't end there, however. Two men with boxes stepped into the building at the same time as us. When the elevator said it was going down, they said they wanted to go up, and I spoke up, saying, "I always just get on anyway, because then at least you have your spot on the elevator!"

They smiled, and agreed. We stepped into the elevator, and one of the men looked at my son, pulled out a wonderful "Hail to the Little Victors" baseball cap, and asked if he would like to have it. That made him smile! And me too--in fact, just the week before, I had been thinking how much I would love to get my son something with the hospital's very catchy slogan on it! What a gift, that our God pays attention to even such seemingly small things!

I told the man, "Thank you! God is being so good to us in so many ways today!"

When we walked into the doctor's office, I finally allowed myself to look at the clock. We were two minutes early! At this point, it wasn't about being early or late. It was about my Father creating an opportunity to shower me with love in a way He knew I would understand and appreciate. It was about my Father letting me know my husband and I are not alone in this.

The appointment was every bit as valuable as I had hoped it would be. And at the end, when my son was able to choose a prize, it was no dentist-office treasure chest toy, like I'd imagined. There were some very thoughtful gifts for the children, and the foot-tall Darth Vader figurine my son chose was an extra-big blessing for my avid Star Wars fan. It felt a bit like his birthday, like we were being showered with love.

When we stopped for food on the way out, since my son had been too sick to eat much earlier in the day, they even had a small meal he could eat. Getting food when we are on the go has become very tricky, and I usually just avoid it. But on this day, it was like blowing out the candles on a cake--the perfect conclusion.

We have been to the doctor a couple times since that day, and while they all have been just as difficult, I thankfully haven't found myself needing to make another such bold request. God gave a gift that day, and it was much bigger than a parking spot or an on-time arrival.

He showed me that when I carry my son, He carries me. He carries us both. And He is mighty indeed.

(After I finished writing this, the song Mighty to Save came to my mind. I hope it is a gift to you today! You can see it here.)