My hands grip things tight.
They aren't fluid, my fingers. They grasp, and they hold -- fierce and unrelenting, until contractures start forming and they couldn't be pried open, even if I wanted them to be.
A person. A thing. A place. A season.
Those leave and they end, but the hand still holds tight, gripping as though I have the power to make seasons last and people stay -- but no matter the strength of the grip, they still leave and they still end, and my weary, contracted hand finds that it's violently clinging to dust and air and a whole lot of nothing.
We are made to hold, to cling, to refuse to let go.
But we hold and cling and never let go of the wrong things.
This generation has an obsession with throwing yourself into life, feeling everything to the nth degree, and that kind of emotional roller coaster will drive you right insane.
Unless you have a Rock.
Unless the thing we hold onto the fiercest, the sanctuary of our souls, our "happy place," our source of identity and joy will never, ever leave or end, happen what may to the rest of our world, we will constantly be rewriting ourselves after the latest thing we've been holding onto is gone.
Everything ends. Seasons change -- cliché, but true, and none the less painful for being such a routine part of being human.
Everything ends.
"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End" (Rev. 22:13).
Well then…perhaps not everything.
"But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord's love is with those who fear Him" (Ps. 103:17).
The only rest, the only peace, the only pure joy can ever come from holding onto the only One who can hold us right back.
Bring the scraps and the broken with you -- when He's holding you tighter than you could ever hold anything, all is redeemed, and nothing is wasted. When He is your constant, the endings cannot crush you and the beginnings cannot faze you, because no matter where you are in life, you are always right in the middle of Him.
