Walking on Water

The past few weeks I have been wrestling with my path, purpose and passion. During a time of fear and uncertainty, where most people are locked in, I still have a job and can leave the house, speak with other people face-to-face, three days a week. It’s glorious…. well, not really, it’s still a job. But it does take me out of myself into a world that is bigger than my hermit hole.

But I reached a high state of fear last week. Well, perhaps less fear and more anger, frustration and just feeling tired. My ego was completely let down when I found out I missed out on an opportunity. You see, it’s not that I just lost out on this opportunity. I have lost out on so many opportunities having moved to a different country and not having the same connections as I did. When I left Canada, I was offered three amazing jobs within a church-y setting. One of which would have given me an office in the school I’m attending, a school that has become more than a family to me. But alas, I left. I left all my privilege and my fame behind and became nobody… trying to prove myself in a country that doesn’t like people trying to prove themselves.

Then a shift.

I’m not sure what exactly happened but it changed everything. My mentor who has been guiding me through my period of discernment with the Uniting Church of Australia called and I revealed to her my anguish and my frustration of my anguish.

She invited me to look at story. To find something in the bible that resonated with my current circumstances. And that’s when I found Jesus walking on water. It was something about the imagery of this holy light walking steadily on the crashing waves, Peter’s excitement to join him and, within the same breath, Peter’s fear of drowning. I realized that, in my own life, I too was drawn in passion to following the way but, within the same breath, was focusing on my own feet, my own drowning and not at the grace of God stepping closer to me amongst the waves. As soon as I looked up to see the face of God, I was saved from my misery.

When I say everything changed, I mean everything has changed. You can spend a lifetime trying to change your paradigm, your theology and your friendship circle in attempts to be a better person and still find that nothing’s changed. For me, I never succeeded at truly changing myself. And perhaps I still haven’t. But it seems like the last 30 years of my life accumulated in this singular conversation as I took one step forward and let go of it all after many years of internal resistance.

I saw things differently.

That person who continues to favour other people, who ignores me, who subdues me, is just a person who has an unhealthy attachment to power – it’s not about me. The job that isn’t ministry has something here, a kernel of gold that I haven’t quite been able to put my finger on. That friend who I’m jealous of has released into feelings of joy. The conversations I have with people are less about me and have opened up to curiosity and deep listening I never thought was capable. It’s as if someone put a spell on me, washed my eyes and opened my heart. It’s as if I have joined Jesus in the impossibility and miracle of walking on water.

Maybe for the first time I understand this story, my story, a story that has been building up to this moment since I was born and at last makes sense in my bones: that miracles are often secondary to what happens internally to the person who believes them.