Eyes wide shut

Today really is the first day in the rest of my life. Exciting stuff.

Let's see: I stumbled out of bed this morning with my normal abnormality, a painful, stiff back that resents being straightened or bent depending on how things went in dreamland, two knees that are protesting their usage and even a bit of a headache. I fumbled with slippers and found my robe in a pile of Saints clothing. The sky was pewter gray and it was cold as I walked slowly out to get the newspaper. I spilled coffee grounds on the counter and apparently into the coffee maker as well, since coffee and coffee grounds greeted my cup at the same time when the black liquid was released from the maker. The paper told the story of my unpleasant experience with the Saints parade from two days earlier. I've got some things to do today, but it's really much like the rest of my calendar, fairly clear.

I've fighting depression and struggling with the constant search for joy. Where did it go through all this, my mind and body keeps asking?

Then through it all, in contemplating just what does all this mean, I find a nugget that turns the sun into more than heat giver.

In a book that I strangely but highly recommend, The art of racing in the rain, there is this phrase about automobile racing: The car goes where the eyes go. I won't talk about the book more because you should read it and I probably can't even help you understand it if you don't on your own, but the phrase speaks to where I am this morning.

My eyes have been off the prize. They have strayed. They are not on the one who gives such light that a mere moment in his presence leaves us with shining faces. My eyes have been on that which is darkest: me. I have been looking at my future through eyes that have no glow. I have been looking at my present through eyes that look only for what and how this all affects me.

I couldn't be farther from the grace and mercy of God, not because He isn't despearately attempting to race down that long road to greet me but because somewhere in there in the past month I've stopped looking ahead through eyes of love.

I have wanted to strike out at something or someone because of my own loss and my own grief. I have wanted to change things through my own power. I have wanted a different ending to the story. I have WANTED.

The Bible tells us that Jesus at one point in the Garden, a wonderful place filled with Olive trees that are strangely created beings that look like old humans in their crevices and their faces, asked his Father to take this cup away.

The cup of pain.
The cup of depravity.
The cup of outcome.
The cup of misery
The cup of coming sin.

He wanted to change things before they even happened.

Briefly.

Then he said those wonderful, saving, grace-filled words: But your will not mine be done.

And we were saved.

I've entered into the valley of the shadow I'm slowly emerging, looking for that which makes my face radiate from within. Nothing I do, nothing I wish for, nothing on this earth can make me do that.

But He can, and He will.

The car goes where the eyes go. Mine are turning back to Jesus. Open my eyes, Lord, open my eyes.