Mothers Group Reflection #27: "Held"


I have to admit something. I have answered some of the hardest questions of my life this past summer. I thought it was going to be all sunshine and fun as we planned our various activities, but the reality, while still good, was quite different from what I first envisioned.

I watched as things happened to people I love that were just too hard for my mind to wrap itself around. I have found that it is one thing when hard things happen to me. But it’s another thing entirely when someone I love is going through something tough. And a curious thing began to happen. I began asking questions I had somehow never thought to ask. Questions that I thought were long ago settled, “beginner” questions, if you will. And rather than my usual faith answers, I found myself grappling deeply and looking at God, asking, “What were you thinking?”

How do you wrap your mind around moments that seem beyond comprehension? The moments in the wake of deep loss when you stare at the calendar and realize it’s only been 4 days and wonder how you’ll get through the next 14,600 days, give or take?

I’ve seen Him give far greater gifts than the things or relationships I have sacrificed along the way in order to follow His will, or the losses of life in general, but each situation and person is so unique and irreplaceable. But none of this is really the point. It isn’t about what we have or don’t have or who is or isn’t in our life. We don’t serve a distant God in heaven that is testing us just to see what we’ll do in tough times.

He knows that without Him, we simply can not do life. Period. And sometimes, in order to protect us from things we can’t even see or imagine, He allows us to feel that need a little (or sometimes a lot) so that we will learn to turn and reach up for Him and just be held. We will learn how to really draw close to Him and realize just how close He already is. And the thing I have found in each of these tough moments in life, is that He is right beside me, crying with me, saying, “I didn’t want this to happen either. But I’m here with you and I’m not going anywhere.” He didn’t cause these tough things, but He’s here with us in the midst of them.

I think that at the end of the day, we were made for full union with God, as things were before the fall into sin in the Garden of Eden. We know deep down...things should be different. And we long for the day when they will be fully restored. Yet we’re stuck with the messy in-between. We fear our vulnerability to loss and sin. When we feel vulnerable in a sinful world, like Adam and Eve, we try to cover ourselves. We are ashamed or afraid and worry what will happen to us as a result of this vulnerability. We fear the emotions of loss or of possibly being exploited in some way. We doubt God’s goodness, because we still too often believe the ancient whisper that He’s not really good, rather than face the full weight of the pain before us.

We can miss new opportunities for true connection in times of fear and lack of trust, yet as we heal, as we learn to trust Him more and more, as we become more fully integrated, we begin to see our greatest weakness is actually our greatest asset. This vulnerability is what leads us to Jesus. It was the need that was always there...for Him. It is a true, good need that we can trust. It was humanity’s choice for sin that corrupted it into how we see it today – a huge liability. The fall broke our relationship with God, and it hasn’t been completely and fully restored this side of heaven, so we live with the in-between.

I don’t know where you are at in life. Maybe everything in your life is peachy keen. Maybe you are also grappling with those tough questions. Either way, I hope the following song will be a blessing to you also, as you rest in the arms of a Father who loves you more than you can possibly imagine, come what may.

“Held” by Natalie Grant

Verse for the week:

“Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” - 2 Corinthians 12:8-10 NRSVCE


Photo Credit: Josh Willink, StockSnap.io

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