Let’s Try Holding On

Across oceans and continents, we still write and leave one other voice memos. When crisis comes or we find something funny, we send it to the other. We reminisce about the years we spent under the same roof, how we miss the Sunday mornings we spent making breakfast or listening to Josh Garrels in the living room.

Recently she asked me something that I wanted to answer, but wasn’t sure how to nail down. “What parts of me was it okay to lose?”It’s been years of growing, leaving, heartbreak, change—it’s a question we’ve both asked, but not one I’m sure I’ve figured out the answer to.

I think I’m better at holding on, so maybe it’s something I should reframe. Maybe I will give her some things she should try to keep through all the years, miles, plans, and seasons ahead.

Hope.

When all of us girls lived together in Georgia, we used to quote or sing Marky Mark, telling each other to be “in it to win it” —or otherwise. We once wrote it above the doorframe of our house.

I think holding onto hope is something like that. It’s the kind of thing you find people to wake up and sing to you. You learn to say to yourself, write it wherever you need to remind yourself to stay when things get hard.

Find people that have it, carry it, give it away, and are determined not to lose it–that are bold enough to tell you stay in it. Dig your heels in next to them and ask God to help you plant there. Wherever hope is, you’ve got a good chance of learning how to keep your heart open, soft, ready for whatever God has to say.

Joy.

Someday when I’m old, the one story I’ll probably be known for telling is the time my house of roommates were in the middle of prayer and we all ran out in the middle of a holy time to go buy an ice cream cake that said “Chicken in the Desert”.

We laughed until we cried, feasted until we were full, and we knew that God was right there in the middle. I’m also quite confident that while the girl behind the counter was confused about the statement on the cake, she saw something holy in that moment too.

Don’t lose your joy. You might sometimes lose your happiness, things that once added to your contentment and circumstances, but do not lose the ability to extend a holy moment into something that is seemingly ordinary or non-religious. God likes cake too and He likes when we pull Him into our best moments, worst moments, weirdest jokes, wildest conversations. Do not lose the ability to be childlike in your prayers and in the way you spend your days.

The world is full of people seeing everything half-empty, fully broken, and through the lens of all the things going wrong with the day. Do not lose the ability to see reality, but to choose the privilege of seeing the good God is and makes in and around us in the middle of pain.

You.

She asked me how to even remember who that is. Believe me when I tell you, sometimes it’s hard. I’m going to tell you to hold onto the parts you are so tempted to cover up, to yourself, to others, to God. The parts you are certain no one claps for, no one is impressed by, no one ever wants to see. The parts that have stuck with you, though you’ve tried to shake them. The parts that you secretly wish you could run away from. I’m telling you to hold onto them because I am learning, heaven help, I am learning that those places when I open them are the ones God pours into so fast. The only place to take them to is Him.

Those places that I sometimes think are too much, too little, not enough, that I probably need to scale back on. The second I crack the door on them, that’s when the light comes rushing in. That’s when God shows up and says something that is worth hearing and worth sharing. Don’t try to push them away or lose them, crack them open and let Him in. The things I think are worthless and weak, those are things that I find Him making the most of and showing me how to carry.

Faith.

Sometimes God likes a grand entrance, but sometimes God likes to sneak in through the back door and speak up when no one is expecting it.

But He will always come. Not usually in the way or time we thought, and I’ll probably often be standing there on the sidelines with you trying to figure out where He is and why He seems late. But we’ve seen Him show up too many times not to trust that He sticks to His promises, He shows up, and with a lot better than the plans than the ones we made.

I can’t tell you all the things you’ve lost along the way, what was meant to be yours, what to let go of, what needed to stay.

But you’re still in the making, in the wrestle, still in the game. You don’t have to know, have it all figured out. There’s no age limit on this “knowing who you are” thing. Walking with God is life long, you drop some stuff off, thinking you’ll never see it again, only to find out He picked up the bag on His shoulders and will hand it to you again at a different gate. Don’t worry about it, whatever you lay down, if it’s something you’re supposed to pick up again, He’s got you covered from now until eternity.