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!