A Grateful Life Lived

It’s been a quiet few months on my website, so kudos to those of you who have stuck around and are back to read the latest.

Truth be told, home renovations have consumed my life. Between that and launching a business, it’s been challenging to find a head space worth writing from.

I experienced a lot of grief when my husband and I made a cross country move in July, but I didn’t expect the lingering purgatory of this season. We are in between chapters; trying to hold on to fumes of the diverging plot lines—life out West and life in the Midwest; life pre-healing and life in the healing journey.

Usually, this is the part where I write about my controlling tendencies and/or the value of letting things go. That’s not what God has impressed upon me lately, though. It’s simply not that cut and dry.

A Quick Scripture Study

I like the way the Amplified Bible communicates God’s Word in the book of Hebrews:

He Himself has said, I will not in any way fail you nor give you up nor leave you without support. [I will] not, [I will] not, [I will] not in any degree leave you helpless nor forsake nor let [you] down (Heb. 13:5).

The repetition in this translation is impactful. It highlights the weight of God’s words in a manner that does not translate well into English. For example, if someone were to say: “I don’t not want to go to the zoo” we would take it to mean that the person wants to go to the zoo. Since the “nots” cancel each other out, the statement would be properly written as, “I want to go to the zoo.” Similarly, we would say that Hebrews 13:5 is really saying, “I [God] will not forsake you” or, as we commonly recite it: “I will not let you go.”

But in the original Hebrew language (as I understand it), it would not be grammatically weird to leave the double negatives. Their presence (as the words were originally penned) actually communicates intensity. Think of it like the difference in a modern-day text message:

I won’t let you go VS. I WILL NOT LET YOU GO!!!!!!!!

Holding On vs. Letting Go

This verse is one my dad shared with me many years ago, and it recently has stood out to me for the reasons I shared above. What is particularly helpful, however, is the concept of holding on. Yes, Christians are called to let go of a lot. In fact, “let go” (or variations of this phrase) is mentioned hundreds of times in the Bible.

But it’s not the trite “let go and let God” of Pinterest Christianity. We are also called to hold on—a command that means just as much in the context of faith.

Apparently God has found my character in need of refinement in this area. The last few years have seen a rotating door of friends and trusted mentors in my life—people who “cared” and then didn’t. The mingling of new pain in old childhood wounds left me with one resolve: Don’t get too invested.

It became easy to draw lines in relationships—holding back my weakness and watching for every sign of a coming abandonment. It is an easy way to live the hard way. In other words: I was miserable. And it’s not as if I flipped the switch and adjusted to getting my heart pummeled. My ability to love and lose is still a work in progress.

To me, this is what “letting go” means: Mentally backing away, checking out, breaking trust in anticipation of someone leaving you. Note that God has not and will not let go of us, though—despite the many times we “let go.”

Please know before we go any further that I am NOT talking about relationships that are abusive, harmful, or dangerous. When we discuss the concept of holding on, it is in reference to pressing through the fear of abandonment. It is not a call to “hold on” to every relationship or situation—whether it is abusive or not. This is about fear and faithfulness, not condoning sinful behavior of someone else.

The mingling of new pain in old childhood wounds left me with one resolve: Don’t get too invested

With that caveat in mind: I think the struggle to not let go is a key part of being human. It is what Peter agonized over in the Garden (“Do I forsake my Savior in fear?”) and how the Israelites flailed in the wilderness (“God is leaving us here to die… let’s abandon Him first”). It’s also the weakness Jacob literally wrestled with in Genesis; he wanted God to bless him and instead of mentally checking out, he did what you and I are called to do: Fight for what we know to be true of the Lord.

What we know of God’s faithfulness is what informs our ability to love others. That means that when we are afraid of being abandoned or of loved ones dying or of growing unimportant to others, we can rest on God’s faithfulness to us. We can rest on the truth that our hearts are designed to be soft, fleshy feelers; that sometimes this broken world will hurt in the process of using our hearts.

The irony of Jacob’s wrestling match in Genesis 32 is that God never let go of Jacob. He was true to His promise in Hebrews 13—likely using the situation to grow Jacob’s faith muscles. Even when we are noncommittal toward God, He is steadfast, whether we are faithful or not (2 Tim. 2:13).

Who are we to give up on the God who never gives up on us?

Don’t Be the First to Let Go

In light of this, I believe we are called to be a tug-of-war type of people; ones who don’t let go of the heavenly battle because our hands hurt or we’re scared. That isn’t to say it’s easy… I write this amid an emotional ache that—despite being months old by now—still haunts me. I find myself wishing I’d never trusted, never let myself be cared about, never fallen for an empty promise.

In response, I cry and I get angry and numb myself by focusing on the latest project (aka: fixing up the disaster of a home we moved into). But that doesn’t seem to work because at some point, I’m wide awake at 3 a.m. with a glacial horn of anger scraping my lungs.

I am angry because I know that despite the pain of loss—however it may come about–I now understand the value of holding on through the end. That knowledge burns.

As loved ones grow older and violence grows louder, as the brokenness of the world amplifies in our daily lives; I want to be a woman of God who refuses to let fear win. I don’t want to let go just because I’m afraid I’ll be left—by death or circumstance. That isolating tactic kept me safe when I was younger, and I value it for that. AND I don’t need to self-protect in that way anymore. Neither do you. We have a Heavenly Father who endured to the end in order to bring us into relationship with Him again. That relationship will never, never, never, never fail. When all earthly alliances and covenants fail, His will not.

As Dane Ortland puts it in Gentle and Lowly,

“Jesus does not love like us. We love until we are betrayed. Jesus continued to the cross despite betrayal. We love until we are forsaken. Jesus loved through forsakenness. We love up to a limit. Jesus loves to the end.”

That truth wrecks me. I want to live like that.

Here’s to a life of bold, emotional connection; to caring over playing it cool. We need that authenticity and we were created for it.

Love,

Han