The Road Back

Matthew 14:22-33

REFLECTION
The last time I wrote to you, I thought I would be back in a week refreshed from a slower week with one of my sons working on pyrotechnics together. I really wanted to be back writing more than a week ago. That's not how it went, and there was a lot in between. I had a whole week planned out - a slow start with my son, building toward two fireworks shows, the first working with school-aged kids on a real field, teaching them how to run a show safely alongside six other crews setting up around us, then a second show built by adults who didn't have much experience, working alongside him and a good friend. I'd spend my birthday watching it all go up, and we'd head home Saturday.

That's not what happened. The way out cost us two flat tires, a camper left by the side of the road, an unexpected night in a hotel. By the second flat, I was out of good solutions - no trick left, no plan B, just standing there. The rest of the week was spent trying to catch up from there. We lost the entire slow start I'd planned, just to get the camper to the site and set up.

Just when I thought I was back to "normal," the return trip killed that idea as well. I tripped on an air hose and messed up my right hand pretty bad. Just when we started to figure out a way back from that, I ended up sick. Bottom line, last week didn't go according to plan either.

If the trip out had gone according to plan, I wouldn't have been at Mass that Sunday morning. We'd have made the Saturday evening Mass instead, on schedule, and moved on. Instead we were there Sunday, listening to a monk from an abbey near Appleton preach on Peter walking on the water.

Peter asks Jesus to call him out onto the waves, and it works, right up until he notices the wind. That's when he starts going under - not because the water changed, but because his eyes did. Jesus doesn't lecture him for asking to come out in the first place. He just reaches out and asks why he doubted. The monk's point wasn't complicated: we're not going to solve most of what we're actually up against, and the only way through it is keeping our eyes on Jesus instead of on the outcome we wanted.

I've been turning that over ever since, mostly because of what I would have missed. If I'd spent that week grieving the peaceful trip I didn't get, I don't think I'd have had anything left to notice the homily land exactly when I needed it, or the kids who showed up ready to learn, or the fact that six crews worked that field together and nobody got hurt, or my birthday with people I love. None of that good was contingent on the week going according to plan - it just needed my eyes free enough to see it.

You've probably got your own version of the week that didn't survive contact with reality lately - the trip, the plan, the version of things you'd already pictured before it fell apart. The question was never whether you get the outcome you drew up. It's whether you can pry your eyes off what you lost long enough to trust there's a bigger plan unfolding around you, and see whatever's actually standing in front of you instead.

That's what Christian joy actually is, I think - not everything going according to plan, but eyes clear enough to see the plan that's actually unfolding, pain included. We don't pretend the pain isn't real. We just refuse to let it be the only thing we're looking at.

My hand is healing. The sickness is clearing up. None of it was the week I wrote down before we left, and I'm glad of that now. Tomorrow the reflections start back up. I'm walking into that the same way I finally walked back onto the "dry land" of my life - just trying to keep my eyes in the right place.