Saturday, February 21, 2009

He must have gazed deeply into my eyes

It was one of those tough days, when at the end of the day all you want to do and all you wish is to hit the bed and slip into that beauty sleep. As soon as I was back from office, all the four of my little ones were waiting with their little tasks that they wanted Appa to do. So the day went on, finally we had finished the prayers, put the three elder angels to sleep finished dinner and was ready to go to sleep. But there was only a slight hitch, the youngest member of our family Kunju Babychan had decided that it was play time and there was no way he was going to sleep till he had enough of his fun. After a little while of his romping on the bed, we switched off the light and put the feeding bottle in his mouth praying he would go to sleep with that. We lay quietly with bated breath to see if he had gone to sleep. But as soon as his bottle of milk was over, there he was up and running playing obstacle race over both me and Rani. After a little while Rani was fast asleep with all the commotion around her, but I was not able to catch even a wink with him trundling around. So i caught hold of him as he was doing his vault over me, pinned him down, took him in my arms and started rocking him and signing all the lullaby s and nice old Malayalam Jesus songs, and finally he was asleep. I laid back thank fully and was out in a moment. Then through the night there was the two customary bottle feeding sessions and I was thoroughly out in the morning. Rani got up early to get the two kids ready for school and I was hoping to just extend my beauty sleep a bit more. I could not even get my head up from the pillow. Then as on cue I felt the two little hands of kunju babychan on me and his happy laughing gurgling sound. He was ready to play again. I felt all the tiredness welling up into a wave of anger. I definitely could not take it any more, I needed that hour of rest desperately. But bebychan is not one of those people who can take no for an answer, he started crawling over me and headed for the edge of the bed. With all the anger I felt I dragged him back and picked him up. I looked at him with all the frustration I felt. As I looked into his eyes, he gave me his customary smile, happy gurgle and drooled all over my face. At that moment all my anger, tiredness, frustration, every thing melted away. I looked deep into his eyes and saw only unconditional love, joy, hope and trust in there.

For a moment I was stuck dumb. I may have found an answer I was searching for. At the moments of my pain and suffering I had asked Jesus several times, how could you bear those sufferings on that cross for us ? And how can you ask us to endure the sufferings in our lives in a similar way ? I think at those moments on the cross when it was unbearable, he would have looked deeply into my eyes and all the loved ones, with that infinite gaze of love of his own. He must have seen only his own love reflected in them and that would have strengthened him. "His love reflected in the eyes of all the generations down". I hope he looked deeply into my eyes too, and he saw a little bit of that wondrous love reflected in them. And that he still does look deeply into these eyes of mine when I still crucify him through my unloving ways and he continues to see a little ray of that love which he lovingly kept in my heart before I was born, peeping through ....