Go Cross Eyed

I was talking with a friend this week that asked me to explain my blog’s name.  She wondered if I wrote so late into the night that I would start to go cross-eyed or loopy.  I told her that was not the reason.  I explained to her that my eyes were set on the cross of Jesus Christ as the director of my life.  As I proceeded through my life, my eyes were set on eternal things and not the things of this world.  I was cross eyed.  That, however, was not how things always were for me.

When Carl and I were newly married, we were living our lives our way.  Even though we had both been saved at a young age, God really didn’t have much of a place in our lives.  We had our fire insurance (insurance that we weren’t going to hell), but not much else.  We attended church sporatically at best.  Then Carl headed off for a 6 month cruise with the Navy which left me going to work every day and coming home to an empty house.  I began to read my bible to fill the emptiness within me more than anything, but I was still living life my own way.  One day in church there was a musical group there called Global Mode.  The lead singer shared a testimony and then an invitation.  As I sat there in the pew, I heard the Lord speaking to me.  It was a very strong thought that was not my own.  He said, “You’re a hypocrite.  You can’t have it both ways.  You need to choose.”  Well, I can tell you when the Lord calls you a hypocrite, it does not give you the warm fuzzies.  That day I walked the aisle, bowed down and really committed for the first time in my life that I would follow him.  No more looking at the world.  I was going to fix my eyes on the cross from that day forward.

I thought I would be giving up a lot as I made that decision.  What would people think of me?  What if I didn’t fit in anymore?  Being a people pleaser all of my life, it was a concern of mine.  I have to admit that I lost a few friends along the way, but I gained the most precious friends of my life that I know I will be with for all eternity.  I gained so much more than I lost.  In Matthew 16:25-26 Jesus says, “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.  For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and lose his own soul?  Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”  Is it a career ladder?  Is it a bigger house?  It is a new car?  Is it what your family or friends will think?  I decided that day there was nothing in this world worth losing my own soul for.

Up until that point, I had lived my live with a wandering eye.  Have you ever known someone with a wandering eye?  No, I am not talking about lustful people.  I am talking about people who physically have a wandering eye or a lazy eye.  One eye is looking forward, but the other eye is looking off somewhere else.  If you have ever known or talked to someone who has had this condition, it is difficult to determine whether or not they are looking at you.  Are they talking to me or to someone else?  I imagine that is what God is saying when we have one eye set on Him, and one eye set on the world.  He must have to ask Himself, “Are you talking to me or someone else?  Are you more interested in what My word says or what the world says?  Are you loving the things of Me or the things of this world?”  1 John 2:17 says, “And the world is passing away, and the lust of it, but he who does the will of God abides forever.”

My favorite poem ever is by Robert Frost, and it is called “The Road Not Taken”.  An excerpt from it says, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”  I chose that day to go cross eyed, and to take the path that is not as popular in today’s world as it once was.  That decision, however, has made all the difference for me and my life.  I hope, if you have not already decided to go cross eyed, that you would make the choice to go cross eyed too.  That choice will make all the difference.