Where to Fix My Eyes

+ Enlarge

It’s the joyful season of Easter and I’m struggling.

My family members all are healthy, my friends too, and so am I, but I’m struggling.

I have a job that allows me to put food on the table and a roof over my head and still have some left over for fine chocolate and other pleasures, but I’m struggling.

I could bore you with the list of trifling complaints that threaten to overwhelm me, but if I were to recite them you’d wonder why I feel as though I’m suffering slings and arrows, because every one of them is nothing more than a minor everyday inconvenience. I admit this, I see it clearly, and yet it feels as though I’m drowning in these picayune annoyances even though I’m dealing well with each individually.

Take Saturday, for example. It was the day I was due for the second COVID-19 vaccination shot, but I’d never been scheduled for an appointment. I realized that last Monday, so I called to get on the calendar and was told that somehow my records got lost. I provided the necessary information, and was assured they’d get back to me. By Wednesday afternoon I still hadn’t heard from them, so I called on Thursday morning. They said they were still working on it. Friday came and went. Still no word. A friend who had something similar occur was told she could get the vaccine as a walk-in, which she did, but I was turned away when I showed up first thing Saturday morning at the vaccine site. I could, they said, return just before they closed at 6 p.m. and, if they had any extra doses, I’d be given one.

I relate this tale because I’m quite proud of the fact that nowhere in the process did I lose my temper. I was polite with both people I talked to on the phone and all eight people I dealt with in person. I did complain to friends and family, but didn’t rant and rave.

And yet even though on Saturday I turned the matter over to God and did in the end receive the next-to-last dose, I struggled to praise the goodness of the Creator. I gave thanks, yes, but failed to offer praise, because rather than focus on the fact that I had in the end gotten the shot, what I cared about was the frustrating process that brought me to that point.

It seems that every one of the vexations I’ve been facing has a similar convoluted story attached to it, and although I’m doing my best, I’m struggling to see the sunshine through the pall of petty grievances. But the Creator is managing to squeeze through even my small-mindedness, because my daily reading had this to say: “Pay attention to all your emotions, and ask for God’s guidance in deciphering what they’re trying to tell you.”

 And while trying to defuse my frustration, I came across this quote, from Saint Augustine: “Suppose that God wishes to fill you with honey; but if you are full of vinegar, where will you put the honey?”

Now, I certainly feel full of vinegar rather than honey, the symbol of God’s tenderness and goodness. I’d like to empty myself of the one to make room for the other, but I don’t seem able to. I know that the best way to do that is through prayer, but here I must admit that I failed in my Lenten intention to resume an active faith life. Since the pandemic began my daily devotions have dwindled to merely one daily reflection of less than a minute, and yet when yesterday I reached out to God he immediately responded, reminding me of these words of St. Teresa of Avila: “Fix your eyes on the Crucified and everything will become small for you.”

So today here is my prayer: May I keep my eyes on the risen Christ so that I walk on my sea of problems rather than sink beneath the waves.