glue your gaze

We take up an entire row in the airplane—Kevin with Adam on one side, me with Josh and Riley on the other.  This placement, of course, has been strategic: the young one with the most fear smack beside his Father, so close he can feel the warmth of him, can hear his dad living, breathing right beside—arms around, even, if need be.

The thing is: We know that Adam will be afraid, having never flown before, being always our most fearful child, and as I think on this, I hear also a thing God has lately been saying so gently, that He knows on ahead that I’m going to be afraid too, and He also positions me strategically for what’s coming. His enduring love surrounds me, those strong-Father arms opened wide to gather me also into the perpetual embrace of peace.

I wish sometimes that we could all just admit it, that no matter how irrational it may be, no matter how vulnerable and shaky-weak we may feel about it, sometimes we’re just afraid. We think we’re supposed to be so above such a thing, I guess, that we can’t admit that even after we walk with Jesus for a whole long time, there can still be some humanity to our faith, in our broken-up receiving of His perfect fear-banishing love, some need for Him still to help with our unbelief.

But anyway, I look over at Kevin and Adam sitting side-by-side, the one just a younger copy of the other, at least on the outside, and I can’t help but remember something God’s been saying to me lately about the disciples in that boat with Jesus on stormy seas and—the text says—in very real danger, also about Peter, trembling with nerves, walking to Jesus on choppy water like a spiritual babe taking first steps, that in neither case was their fear or their baby faith a surprise to Him. Get this: He didn’t love them any less because they floundered.  And He had been strategic in His withness, in how He let them see Him right there with them.

Fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of faith, the writer of Hebrews wrote, having just spent quite a while listing examples of people who lived by faith even never realizing the fulfillment of God’s promises themselves. Talk about believing Jesus—the one with perfect faith and the one also now perfecting ours–might just be sleeping through the horror, well they certainly could understandably have wondered. The perfecting of our faith anyway seems to be this continual process wherein we children face scary-hard things, first-time-ever things, persistent, long-suffering things, and discover Him right there, steadfast, waiting for us to fix our mortal eyes on His immortal face.

Adam will hide in the alcove in our living room when the Metro Goldwyn Mayer lion roars on the television screen.  In the theater, he shrieked and covered his eyes through most of Jurassic Park. When a fly circles near his face, he will gasp so repeatedly and audibly it sounds like he might be hyperventilating. Adam is, in fact, an unashamed, unpretentious, unapologetic reflection of the raw realities of human insecurity, and as efficient as he tends to be with language, when it comes to anxiety, he says aloud what most of us have tucked carefully into our interior hinterlands. More than once, he has articulated some fear of his and someone nearby has suddenly exhaled with relief, has leaned closer to us to admit softly, wow, but isn’t that exactly what I was just thinking?

You and I, we maybe try at least to look like the brave stoic on the outside, while Adam lacks any prohibitions against advertising his own vulnerability. He doesn’t hide the fact that he’s afraid. So, we clamber all jumbled onto the plane, knowing Adam will loudly reveal his apprehensions to everyone within ten rows of us, and we sit him right beside his dad.

As our plane gains speed for takeoff and I peer over my seat and try to dutifully watch the flight attendant smooth clamp and adjust an empty seatbelt she’s holding out in front of her, Josh reaches for Riley’s hand, their fingers interlacing, skin tight white around the knuckles.  They look at each other and smile, rest their heads against their seats, and close their eyes. It’s Josh’s first flight too, and it’s been so many years since Riley’s childhood experience with flying that it may as well be her first as well. They’re more like the rest of us, though.  If they’re afraid, they’re not telling, in fact, will later conveniently forget who it was reaching first to hold hands, who it was really feeling afraid. They will question each other incredulously, as if the idea seems preposterous.

“Wait–I was afraid? No, I think it was probably you.”

But right now, as the flight attendant disappears behind the partition to take her seat, and the plane thunders down the runway, Adam says, “Uh oh, uh oh, UH OH,” his voice rising because he can feel us approaching some kind of crescendo.  I glance over at them, he and Kevin, across the aisle and smile to find that Adam is staring into Kevin’s eyes, craning to fix his gaze, as he says this.

I can’t even count anymore—it’s been countless—the number of times I’ve tried, as in doctor’s offices and phlebotomist’s chairs Adam mounts toward a scream, staring down the sharp end of a needle ugly-pointed towards a plump vein, to convince my son to look at me—just look at me—instead of the threat, the marauding peace-stealer, the fearsome wave swelling.  I have done absolutely everything I can think of to grab his attention back, from tugging at his chin to singing songs to chanting softly, hey, really you’re okay while laying my hand, flat and solid, against his other arm, but he never will just read my face and see that I am with him and I am not afraid.

I think that’s really what Jesus is after when invites us to fix our eyes, when he’s tugging at our chins, saying, really you just need to look at me. I’ve thought about this, that in that boat, the disciples’ fear looms so large it doesn’t even occur to them to wonder how Jesus could possibly be asleep, except to believe that he must not care.  No one says, “Hey, do you notice?  He’s really okay.  He looks peaceful.” No one thinks about just watching Him and taking their cues from His resting face.  And Peter, well, we all know that other time, when he gets into trouble, starts sinking, sinking, sinking, the minute he looks away from Jesus to look at those wicked waves.

Adam has grown, that’s what I see, watching him glue his eyes to Kevin’s face for assurance, watching him refuse to look away, and I guess I know I’ve grown too when, in the midst of my fear, I stop toying with the thing that’s scaring me to death and start looking at the face of Christ, start looking for how He’s feeling about this thing we’re going through together, start gluing my gaze like this will be the one thing, His enduring love for me, to save my life.  God has promised, and we can surely take Him at His word, that He will keep in perfect peace the one whose mind is stayed on Him because they trust in Him, and isn’t this the picture of trust, of a mind stayed, this determination not to look away from the one who keeps me safe?

Ann Voskamp put this beautifully in her book Loved to Life when she wrote,

“Like a newborn babe keeps looking for the face looking for her, so every soul knows it’s been reborn when, in a world of distractions, it keeps looking toward the Father, seeking the Father’s smile, meeting the Father’s smile with wild delight (46).”

Kevin chuckles and Adam, still fixing to stare his Father down, starts an arbitrary countdown to lift off. “5…4…3…2…1…”  We are still hurtling, and Kevin’s still smiling, so Adam wild smiles too and starts again, “5…4…3—,” but he is interrupted when the plane finally lifts off.  “UH OH, UH OH, UH OH…weeeeee!” Suddenly, we are in the air, soaring.

The entire back end of the plane bursts out laughing, joy bubbling, and Adam laughs too, all wild delight, eyes still locked on his father’s face.  Someone says, “I do hate the lift off,” and we float as if cushioned on clouds, all of us deep breathing.  Beside me, Riley and Josh open their eyes, joy glinting.

Ann Voskamp said, “Our home is in his eyes,” and she’s right, because this is how, I really do believe, laughing happy right there in the back of that plane, we can be honestly awkward and afraid and trembling with nerves about everything we see and don’t understand or don’t know or dread happening, our faith always still perfecting, and somehow, as we fix our eyes on the only perfect one, we can also be right at home in peace.