The Waves

The results we had been bracing for finally came: positive. I looked at the words in plain black and white and waited for the panic to set in.

Just a few weeks before, during the last round of illness, I had waited with bated breath for the same sort of test results. My pulse raced, fingers shaking as I opened the message that would reveal my fate. I was sure—just sure—I would be positive. And if I was positive, then it followed that I would have complications. It was the thing I had been dreading for months, knowing my underlying health problems were a liability. My heart pounded against my rib cage and I could barely breathe, wondering whether I should start writing farewell letters to my family.

All the fear and dread were for naught, last time. The results were negative; some other pathogen was to blame for the symptoms that kept me house-ridden and mostly bed-bound for seven weeks. The inevitable, dreadful possibility still loomed large before us.

When he showed signs of illness, I knew. I knew in my gut that this time was the real deal. I watched over him like a masked hawk, swooping in to assess his temperatures and oxygen saturations, listening to his heartbeat at arm’s length through my stethoscope. I pumped him full of chicken broth and vegetables and Gatorade. I drove him to the clinic to be assessed and tested. He grew steadily worse—though, mercifully, not his breathing—over the next couple of days. The kids and I carried on with schoolwork in hushed tones. There were tears from time to time as they missed their dad or their classmates or all of life before this painful year settled on us. I cooked like a woman possessed—or a woman on borrowed time, anyway—putting up healthy meals in the freezer and seeing to every detail I could to make sure life could carry on smoothly when it was my turn to go down. It was all hypothetical, though, until the results.

At night, I collapsed onto the pullout couch in the basement, feeling the full weight of everything that was happening and everything I did not yet know. In a year that has been heavy enough in its own right, the burden of illness and isolation suffocates. I sat in the darkness, feeling very much alone, and called out to the only One I knew could help. One by one, I took every concern and dropped it in His lap. It was the only way I knew to survive.

Something happened at night. As I unburdened my heart and mind, I was granted the gift of sleep. But there was something more. There was His face. Unexpected, but wonderful, dropping my cares in His lap somehow shifted my gaze from the burdens to His face. And His face made all the difference.

For three days I followed the same routine. Fitful sleep, often rising in the night to pray or check on my family. I hit the ground running, attending to the needs of kids and husband, making meals, disinfecting, washing, and preparing for the long weeks of quarantine ahead of us. For three days, I choked back the panic each time I thought about the looming test results, forcing my mind instead to linger on The Face.

And then, just before bedtime on the third night, the text from my husband in our bed upstairs, a million miles from me. “I’m positive.”

I waited for the panic, the inevitable rush of fear I had been expecting all week as I’d busied myself with preparations and fought back thoughts of what could happen next. I sat in the silence, expecting to teeter into despair.

Instead, there was nothing in the silence and solitude but His face. His beautiful, peace-giving face.

I was reminded of the story of Peter.

Peter and the other disciples had been sent on in a boat ahead of Jesus. The boat was being tossed mercilessly by the waves, because “the wind was against it.” (What a perfect way to describe this year, with all that is buffeting us!)  Just before dawn, they spotted something terrifying on the water, a figure making its way toward them. Unsure what to make of it, they panicked. “It’s a ghost!” they told one another.

But it was no ghost. It was Jesus, walking over the same waves that were tossing and threatening the boat. I find it interesting that there is no mention of the waves calming. In fact, the verses that follow lead me to believe the wind howled on with a vengeance even as Jesus walked toward them.

Peter, wonderful, impulsive Peter, called out, “Jesus, if it really is you, ask me to join you on the water.”

Jesus replied with one word, “Come.”

And so, Peter, full of life and courage I will never muster, climbed over the side of the boat. The one solid, semi-safe place in a tempestuous sea. He climbed out of the boat and began walking on the water!

This is where I like to pause, to let my imagination fill in the gaps. I imagine Peter grinning at Jesus, like a child who is just learning to walk and can’t conceal his excitement and pride. I think he looked full in Jesus’ face as he took one step—two steps—three steps over the rolling waves. The boat was behind him now, too far for him to reach back and grab hold of its side. He was fully in this thing, without a safety net in the middle of the dark sea, walking on the waves toward Jesus. And it was at just this moment that he realized how far he had come from the boat. He was suddenly aware of the depth of the water beneath his feet, of the wind as it whipped his hair and wrapped his clothes tightly around his body. The sea never calmed. What was he doing out here? What was he thinking? How did he stray so far from safety? He was just a man! What made him think he could walk on water?

And so, the inevitable happened. He took his eyes off Jesus’ face. He looked, instead, to the wind and the waves and the boat too far to reach. There was no safety out here. Nothing he could do to save himself. And he began to sink.

There are a few things about this story that I find absolutely amazing. First, Jesus never calmed the storm. He could have—he had done it before. But instead, he walked out over the waves that were threatening the boat to meet the disciples. And it was into this roiling sea that he invited Peter. He invited him right into the heart of the danger.

Second, Peter did walk on water. His doubts and fears were unfounded—he had already taken steps out on the water! He could do this thing. With Jesus’ help, he could walk over the waves.

What caused Peter to fail was not the strength of the waves, the distance from the boat, nor even the fact that he was mortal. It was that he took his eyes off of Jesus. He fixated, instead, on all the things that threatened and endangered him. And he was overwhelmed.

I walk the fine line that Peter walked today. Many of us do. The storm is not calming—it will not calm. The waves are buffeting our lives and rocking our boat. Jesus comes to us over the dangerous waters with a simple invitation, “Come.” There is only one way over the waves. Only one way we make it across the tops of the water without being consumed. And that, I believe, is by fixing our eyes on Him and Him alone.

As our family steps into the rushing waters of positive results, I am holding fast to the face I see before me—not the waves and the wind and all their uncertainty and danger—and I’m doing the very thing Peter did. I’m walking on water.