You Steer Where You Stare

On fixing my mind on Him when life is swirling

Life is swirling all around me right now.

Some of it loud. Some of it quiet and heavy. All of it, if I let it, threatening to steal my hope, my peace, my joy.

I have walked with the Lord long enough to know how quickly a storm outside can become a storm inside.

So I am not writing this to you from the other side of the storm, Beloved.

I am writing it from the middle.

And from right here, I am declaring:

I will not be swept up into a storm of fear and wild emotions.

A promise to stand on

Not because I am strong. Not because I have it all figured out.

But because the Lord has made me a promise.

He will keep me in perfect peace when I fix my mind on Him.

Not partial peace. Not peace only when circumstances cooperate.

Perfect peace.

In the Hebrew, Isaiah writes it as shalom, shalom — peace upon peace. Whole. Complete. Lacking nothing.

That is what He offers a mind that stays on Him.

I will steer where I stare

There is a truth I have come to recognise deeply in this season:

I will steer where I stare.

Anyone who has learned to drive knows this. Your hands quietly follow your eyes. Fix your gaze on the ditch, and somehow that is exactly where you drift.

The heart works the same way.

If I keep staring at the wrong things — the what-ifs, the unanswered questions, the worst-case scenarios that visit at 3am, the opinions of people who were never meant to hold my heart —

I will go in wrong directions.

So I must watch what I fixate on.

This is not denial. Fixing my eyes on Jesus does not mean pretending the wind isn’t real.

Peter saw the wind too. He walked on water for as long as he looked at Jesus — and began to sink the moment the waves became bigger to him than the One who called him.

The storm didn’t change.

His focus did.

Choosing, in this very moment

So I am choosing to place my attention on the Lord.

Not tomorrow, when things settle. Not once I feel calmer.

In this very moment.

I am choosing to focus on trusting Him and believing His promises.

Faith, I am learning, is often less a feeling and more a turning. A gentle, deliberate turning of the face toward Him — again, and again, and again.

And as I steer my attention more and more toward Him, His peace comes.

It floods my heart. It settles my anxious mind.

Not always all at once. Sometimes it comes like a tide — wave after quiet wave — until I realise I am standing on solid ground again.

For you, Beloved

Perhaps life is swirling around you too.

Perhaps you have been holding your breath for weeks, bracing for the next wave.

Can I ask you, gently:

What have you been staring at?

You don’t have to fix everything today. You don’t have to calm every storm.

You only have to turn your eyes.

When the anxious thoughts rise, try this: name what you have been fixating on. Then lift your eyes and speak one promise of God out loud — slowly, like you mean it, even if your voice shakes.

That small turning is not small in heaven.

A prayer

Lord, life is swirling around me, and my mind wants to run in every direction.

Today I choose to fix my eyes on You.

Where I have been staring at fear, turn my gaze to Your faithfulness. Where I have been rehearsing the storm, remind me of Your promises.

Keep me in Your perfect peace. Flood my heart. Settle my anxious mind.

I trust You.

Amen.

“You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.” — Isaiah 26:3

Walk Held.

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