Once Upon the Ink

Part 2 of 2 (taken from Matthew 14:22-33)

The wind is screaming like a banshee, and the waves are heaving up and down like appearing and disappearing scales on the spine of an enormous monster, coming up out of the deep, circling us in predatory hunger. To add to the horror of it, it’s pitch black – the worst hours of the night. Dread is hanging over us, choking us. Taunting us that at any moment the sea will pull our tiny bobbing boat underneath it. The men have been fighting to get to shore for hours, and they’re exhausted. And I have realized there is nothing that makes you feel smaller and more fragile and more alone than a sea turned monster.

I started this post weeks ago, hovering around the edges of this story without fully entering it. There is something heart stopping about the man I can see walking towards us, over the waves. His hair and his cloak are whipped around by the wind, but his face calm. Unafraid. He’s unbothered by the power of the elements that are freaking the rest of us out. They’re his elements, so to speak. And in a moment like this, with that juxtaposition, he takes my breath away.

It’s not very often that you find tales where Jesus unveils his power this way. He’s more apt to be sneaky with his power – revealing it with a gentleness mixed with a truth that spikes itself right to the heart of your pain, or fear, exposing it and inviting healing in a way that’s subtle. Humble. So that you don’t even realize what power he’s exuding until later.

But right now he’s fairly lit up with that otherness. That eerie awareness that he is much more than just human.

So I found myself dithering as I sat watching him.

One week turned into two, and then three. I was scared to write something mundane – or to try too hard to be clever.

It makes me homesick, you know? His manner as he comes towards the boat. The way he looks, the expression on his face. The safety that he exudes with every step above a wave that would threaten anyone else. The power of him. He’s like every fairytale rescuer in this story. That magical moment in every movie that steals your heart and makes you wish it were true.

This story is like a tug-of-war. The screaming storm of certain death, an earth out of control and unstoppable. And him. Standing there, patient with Peter’s efforts to explore what it means.

Matthew wrote that after spending the night alone on the mountain with his dad, Jesus looked out and saw the trouble the men were in. And immediately he went to them.

When Peter looked away from Jesus, saw that big wave coming to swamp him and started sinking, Matthew wrote that Jesus immediately grabbed him and pulled him up. He didn’t let him flounder, didn’t let him sink under, didn’t instruct him how to try harder.

But my brain, my little doubtful brain, it whispers with this half-wistful, half-rebellious cry, “really? Immediately, Jesus?”

I tried to sweep past it, ignore it as it complains in the back of my mind. So I think about his voice as he grabs Peter – I was taught growing up that he was exasperated, frustrated. But Peter sinking can’t have been a surprise to him.

Did he chuckle, his hand warm and tight and big around Peter’s forearm as he hauled him up onto the waves – that teasing glint in his eye, “Come on, brother – you can’t see me right here in front of your eyes?”

I know how often we choose to berate ourselves – blame the humans for not being better, not having more faith, not holding onto him tighter. I grew up on that frustration with Peter for sinking so quickly. For having so little faith. I’ve heard many an “opposite” sermon of someone who wanted to sound different and said… at least Peter tried. All the others sat back and quivered in fright… doing nothing (Like the rest of you ninnies afraid to tell your neighbour about God.)

But then I look at that storm. There is no storm as frightening as one on the waves. Maybe in the middle of the forest without shelter from falling trees… but out here, in the middle of the sea… it is terrifying when it’s angry and when the wind is screaming at you, throwing you around like a play thing.

Did you know the word “doubt” in the Greek stems from the word “two” that it comes from the idea of listening to two voices or having one opinion split into an opposing one? So when Peter looks at these waves and sees them coming for him, giant monsters he’s powerless against… and when Jesus says in English translation to Peter – why did you doubt? What I think makes a bit more sense is more like: what voice did you let into your mind to compete with mine? To drown me out?

There’s a preposition in the Greek sentence that gets skipped over (eis) which is a word of motion – movement towards or into. Peter let the reality of the storm into his brain to argue with the reality of Jesus. Just as I do, all the time.

Faith on the other hand, in the Greek, stems from the idea to be persuaded, or convinced. We believe in something because we’ve been convinced. Not because we decide to. But because our experience, our minds, have been persuaded to that belief. Decision is the tail end of persuasion. In other words belief doesn’t come from memorization, from self-help statements said by rote, but from experience. Saying I believe you doesn’t make it true until I am convinced.

There’s one word though, that I don’t have any trouble deciphering – and it’s the word “immediately” – immediately Jesus reached down and caught Peter, hauling him up.

Honestly, in this moment, watching this man above the sea coming to our rescue, watching him stride above the chaos in such calm authority… my doubt hurts me. Twists and cramps in my chest.

I can feel the depth of his safety beckoning me to nestle myself down in his pocket and let the storm go on around me, not worrying because I have him holding me.

That little sly hiss in my brain, the list popping up of all the ways he doesn’t show up immediately. It’s unwanted.

“Because it sure doesn’t seem like it,” the little accusation continues despite my trying to shut it down, my eyes trained on the giant wave coming towards me – every syllable a fresh cut into my faith in him. Bleeding me out.

“Didn’t the Israelites pray for years before you saved them from Egypt? Aren’t there children dying everywhere from Leukaemia and war?” I could go on, a huge list of the seeming absence of his help.

The thing is, I’m crying as I say it, watching him taking Peter into the boat.

That list feels almost cliche right now, it’s so long and its’ words so threadbare and worn out. Like all the others before me, I’ve pored over them so many times they’re just syllables. There’s cold comfort in the science of being right. Of being cynical. Of having your eyes chained to the destruction and all the darkness around you. But now that I’ve started this train of doubt I can’t seem to stop it. The words are dragged out of me, accusatory and spiking my heart with each time they dig into his skin.

“How? Tell me when!” I shout at him, “when did you help me immediately?”

He stares at me without answer, cool as a cucumber, the wind and waves screaming around him. He knows I won’t accept anything he says right now. In reality we don’t like answers unless we come up with them ourselves or something inside us already agrees with them. That’s the thing about trust – you can’t really fake it. Not in a storm.

I think of the years of witnessing things I couldn’t get away from. Of the broken connections I face in my family, of –

– a memory softly surfaces in my mind. Of a day years ago when I wept over my son. I didn’t know how to be his mom after the years he spent being abandoned and mistreated before we met – I turned into Jesus’ chest and told him that I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t strong enough. I didn’t ask for help really, all I did was pour out my inability to manage – that I didn’t know how to keep hitting the wall my son had built to protect himself from hurt.

The very next day my son shared a peek of his heart with me. Softened enough to let me in a bit. Stopped raging around the house like a tornado of destruction and anger for the day. Not forever, just for the day. But it was enough to give me hope.

… another memory ripples of my daughter dancing into the room at four years old where I stood frozen, in the middle of telling Jesus I didn’t know how to talk to my husband about the chasm between us – she was singing at the top of her lungs – “remember mommy? My God is so big, so strong and so mighty, there’s nothing my God cannot do for you!”

…another memory surfaces, sitting on the floor in my bathroom, tears streaming down my face, screaming into a folded towel so my kids wouldn’t hear me, the trap around me so tight I could feel it’s teeth crushing my bones. All I could see laid out in front of me was a slow march of hopelessness all the way to my own death. There was nothing to pull me off that floor. Nothing to keep me going except the cost of what it would be for my kids to find me there.

My eyes jerk to his, then, the memory jarring, still a fresh wound between us sharp and throbbing with pain, though it’s years old. His eyes are quiet, anguished – he remembers that night too. It was one of our darkest pits to walk through, I couldn’t find him there in what was happening to me – sometimes I think that’s where everything tipped sideways in a slow tumble into cynicism, when he didn’t answer my screaming. Sometimes I think I’m still trapped in stasis there, waiting for him to scoop me up and pull me out of the dark of it. It’s why I scoff at “immediately,” while I also linger over it wistfully.

“What was immediate about your help then?” I whisper to him, finally asking for real. In the years since then I haven’t’ been able to find him there. Not once. But somehow, this time, I know he led me to this memory, exposing the cut so we could face it together.

In answer he scoops me up into his arms and pulls me into the boat and its prow snugs against the shore… the storm quiets. “I was the towel you screamed into, Ker.” He murmurs, “I was the lock on the door to give you safety, and I kept everyone away so you could break in my arms.”

I couldn’t see him there in the dark, but he could see me.

I still as relief pours over me. As I feel the strength in his arms and the patience. This is our process – the way we navigate through storms. Sometimes we just get through them until we’ve reached dry ground to decompress. Sometimes I can see him right in the middle. My faith is fickle and easy to snuff out in the approach of those waves, but his is big and steady, and it holds me safe even when I think I’m drowning. He has the patience and the sight to convince me, to persuade me to trust. To make my belief real.

He is my man above the sea.