An Icon Into the Face of God

I was aware that I had been avoiding her gaze for months. We’d been told that one of the most important practices to implement when our girls joined our family at eight and ten years old was to have them look into our eyes when we talked with them. I’d practiced this with our three biological kids for 15 years and believed in its connective importance. For our bio kids, they only challenged meeting my gaze when they did not want to surrender to me. Otherwise, it was a natural response to love. There is something in meeting another’s gaze which alleviates power. For this new daughter, looking into my eyes was death. 

There were days in her first five months in our family, that she would prefer to sit in the time-out chair in the kitchen for mind-boggling amounts of time before she’d surrender to my gaze and offer a, “Yes, mom.” Her posture toward me was chin up, no eye contact and a river of anger running beneath it all. I sensed this was a survival tactic from the life she’d lived before we adopted her and possibly to survive the transition into our family. She left behind her family, her country, her language, her culture, her friends and everything familiar. She was a fighter. She was a survivor. She postured as if she were her only protector. But the tactics which had kept her alive over there made mothering her here incredibly tiring and complicated.

My friend who’s a therapist said to me years earlier, as I was facing off with some of my own relationally sabotaging constructs, “The survival tactics we constructed as children were our dignity as children because they enabled us to survive, but as adults, they are our depravity.”  That quote has framed my journey for many years. But, neither of us would flourish if I waited until my daughter was an adult to face off with this survival tactic.

Five years into our journey as mother and daughter, some shifts had taken place. Though she bent toward meeting my gaze within a year after her arrival, her eyes pierced mine with anger and contempt each time they met. We were told that her losses had been too many to entrust her heart to us—parents were too close to home. All of the other adults in our world were safe to her so she offered them her affection and the gift of her soft, loving eyes. 

Hello to the ache which felt like it swallowed me whole.

WHEN THE TABLES TURN

We fought for her heart as if all of our lives depended on it. And five years into the war, this momma was depleted. At some point in that year, I became aware that I was resisting her gaze. The tables had turned. I didn’t want to give her another opportunity to sear my heart with her gaze. As much as I willed myself to look into her eyes, something in me resisted the possible connection this would bring. I didn’t want the withness this might bring. How fierce are the ways of the disordered soul.

As I shared my battle with my spiritual director, she suggested, “Why don’t you experiment with a spiritual practice of seeing her face as an icon into the face of God.” Not in a million years would I have come up with this creative practice. When I’m stuck in my story, I lack the creativity to see outside of my story and am grateful for people in my life who love me enough to stir up the image of God in me when I’m suppressing it.  As I drove home, I was grateful for the invitation to walk through the side door of my resistant will and wondered what I would find in my daughter’s gaze. A shift was already happening within me. 

Curiosity replaced my resistance almost immediately. The next time I encountered her, I found myself gazing into her eyes and exploring her face to see what she would image to me of our God. To my surprise, the anger and contempt present for so many, long years was replaced with delight and joy. I found myself lingering in her gaze and delighting in her face. Over the next several months as I beheld her gaze, I began to delight in her and see her more through what I imagined could be the eyes of God. And my heart began to shift. My heart began to rest a bit. My heart began to heal.

Over the past three years, as I’ve continued this practice with so many people in my life, it is an invitation from God to be with rather than over or under another. I’ve grown acutely aware of the feelings within me that trigger resistance to another. This practice has given me the grace to do what my will resists. It seems this is a taste of what it means to grow in grace and understanding of our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 3:18).

Are you aware of resistance in you toward meeting another’s gaze? Perhaps there is someone whose face you might explore as an icon into the face of God.