It’s just a thought here. But sometimes Kiddo#4 looks up at me and stares right into my eyes.
It’s more than eye contact. It’s as if he’s drinking me in, sustaining himself by looking at me so he knows it’s all right. He can stay that way for a very long time, looking at me, studying me, smiling in response to my smiles, and sometimes just smiling because I’m looking at him.
The doctor called that “social smiles” and I’ll joke around with that too. “Where’s your social smile?” said in a squeaky voice, which makes him grin. But there’s more to it.
I wondered to myself if when we get to Heaven, it’s the same way. If we open our eyes and see God looking right at us, eye to eye, face to face, and we lie there still and study Him and drinking Him in, and just feeling good because the most important thing in the world thinks we’re important enough to look at.
Kiddo#4 woke up after the water-on-the-head part of his Baptism. He seemed distressed and made a few sounds, but then he looked up and stared into my eyes, and he stayed that way, and I looked back at him, and he kept calm and quiet though the rest of the ceremony. It didn’t matter to him when he got oiled up with chrism, or when it was noisy or I moved with him. He could see my face, and that meant it was good.
A while ago, I was praying and I thought about a baby learning to walk, and suddenly I imagined myself as the toddler with his hands up in the air, holding God’s fingers to keep steady while practicing walking. And then the scene in my mind changed even more, to a smaller baby just gaining strength enough to stand in his father’s lap, held up with strong hands under his chest as his legs buckle and then straighten to try again. I said in an earlier entry that we’re all spiritually premature, but in that moment I got a definite sense of the soul as an infant in God’s hands.
In our eye-to-eye moments, eventually Kiddo#4 breaks free and looks at other things, or else I do. It doesn’t last forever, and this phase rightly shouldn’t. But for now, I enjoy those moments, and I wonder if in Eternity there won’t be a whole lot more.
I’ve had a similar sense of connection when I meet other people’s eyes. Every so often, I’ll look over at DH, and our eyes will meet, and it’s almost like a physical “shock”, it’s such a strong sense of connection with him. I wonder if that’s why we don’t look at God while we’re here on Earth; the “shock” of meeting His eyes would be too much?
It is true that the “eyes have it”. They are the windows to the soul and have always been a way for me to really touch someone. The connection with a child is so easy to make by eye contact. I feel as we get older we put up curtains and shades on our eyes and do not always experience the soul to soul connection that God intended. Looking forward to the eye to eye with God someday too.