Eyes Fixed on Jesus

-for my son

…keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of our faith. 

Hebrews 12:2

I realized something was different by the time he was eighteen months old.

Look in my eyes, sweetie.

My little one would look anywhere but into my eyes. Day after day, I implored him, gently taking his sweet face in my hands and turning it to mine.

Look at Mommy. Listen to my words.

Something was interfering in my child’s brain, and he could not keep his eyes fixed on mine or anyone else’s. My therapist instincts sounded the alarm. I’d seen this behavior before in patients with autism, and I didn’t want to admit I was seeing it in my child.

I can do this. I know what to do, I told myself.

So I took the behavioral therapy tools I’d been trained to use and began teaching my son to look at me.

Day after day, we worked. Day after day, we took time to sit together and train his brain to focus, to maintain eye contact. Each week, we inched forward in progress. 2 seconds. 5 seconds.

It helped if I placed gentle, firm hands on his shoulders, sending proprioceptive signals to his muscles that calmed and settled his brain.

I learned he had Sensory Processing Disorder. For children with this neurological disorder, their brains are like a jammed-up traffic roundabout. In the typically developing brain, sensory input comes into this “roundabout” and goes where it needs to go. For example, the sound of an airplane overhead just now didn’t keep me from focusing on this writing. It came into my brain’s sensory hub and went on its way: non-essential sound; airplane overhead. For someone with Sensory Processing Disorder, however, all sensory input, touch, taste, smell, sound, and sight, gets stuck. The brain hyper-focuses, trying to survive the chaos of a sensory system on lockdown.

So keeping your eyes fixed on someone else’s is hard work.

But brains can be rewired, hallelujah.

That little boy of mine is now a man in his third year of a competitive engineering program at university. He fixes his eyes on me and tells me he loves me. He fixes his eyes on his friends and laughs out loud. He has also learned to fix his eyes on Jesus.

Just before we are told in Hebrews 12 to fix our eyes on Jesus, we read:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, we must get rid of every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and run with endurance the race set out for us…(v 1).

Our hearts are not so different from that sensory roundabout in the brain, easily jammed up with all the weight and sin of the world around us, coming at us from all directions every moment of the day. How hard this makes it to fix our eyes on Jesus.

Above the din, I hear Jesus calling to me.

Look at me, sweetie. Listen to My words.

I have learned to sit awhile with Him each day. He puts his gentle, firm hands on my shoulders and looks into my eyes. He speaks words to me that help me calm down. The Lord strengthens and settles me. Little by little, I am looking longer. In fact, I am changing. I’m starting to look forward to our times of stillness each day. I need this time with Him every morning. I want to keep my eyes fixed on Jesus. That’s how my heart changes.

The Lord looks ahead into the future and knows the good plans he has for me and you. They begin with the words,

Look at Me, beloved. Listen to my Words.

Lord, help me keep fixing my eyes on You in the chaos of the world. Amen.

@audreycfrank