Hold Hands.

There is this word picture of friendship that keeps bubbling back in my mind.  Especially as I seek friendship, crave community, long for intentionality.  I've learned it the hard way, still long for it the enduring way, and wish for it the dreamer way.  But I've known it, and I know it's good.

Holding Hands.

This image takes no thought, but this life takes so much more.  I've been unraveling the metaphor for months, quite possibly a year, as I've journied through, more like juggled through, the loss of friendship, the lingering hopes of friendship, the stretching to create community, and the struggle to let hope go.

Picture this: the actual action of holding hands takes two people, takes two efforts, take two reaching out.  Away from just self, though still connected, and putting trust, energy, and risk into extending towards another.

But now picture this: only one person continually stretching, pursuing, clamoring after the hand of another, and all you have is one person extending a whole lot of energy and usually burning out with frustration, or falling on their face, feeling the puff of dust.

I've seen this happen.  I've felt this happen.  I've been this person.  On both hands.

I've been the one longing for someone to open up, longing for them gift me back, longing for their efforts my way.  I've created the atmosphere for it -- vulnerable heart, safe spaces, prayerful hours.  But I've known that soul to keep shutting down, to keep staying behind closed doors, to confine into what's safe.  To keeping their hand.  Even when they ached and needed friendship, the soul withheld out of fear, hurt, insecurity, or ignorance.  Kelly Minter remarks, "Receiving comfort requires humility and vulnerability before the Lord, open hands that say we don't know it all or have it all and need our Savior."  (All Things New Bible Study, p21).  Reaching out and receiving hands takes both people willing, both vulnerable, both extending and accepting.

And, let me be honest, I've been the person sought after too.  Badgered with options to meet, texted with extension of friendship, or retreating the circle of community.  Withholding or pulling back my hand.  Because of time and space.  Because of heart protection, head, and mindset.  For me, this is usually an intentional choice.  Something I've wrestled with and wrangled to death, for better and worse.  I'm usually coercing through the thoughts of weeding and planting with it, creating soil for fruit, and working with angst to "take captive every thought for Christ" (II Corinthians 10:5) which for me, means being around those who help me long for him and spur my mind to purity, righteousness, and joy (Phillipians 4:8-9).

Now, I recognize there are seasons for this, and seasons where it looks different.  There are seasons where one friend is holding on with great strength, while the other is faltering, but needing the clasp of support.  There are seasons when one is pulling and the other is dragging, and one is squeezing, and the other is limp. (Great examples of this are when my mom died, or when my babies were in their first year (hello Anne, Trish, Heidi, Laura, Jenny, Missy, Kate Vasey...).  I was laying in the dirt, deep in the mire, yet they stood on rocks and kept grasping and holding and encouraging me.  Giving out.  Clinging to my hand for my hope.  And the reverse has been seen too, like sitting with friends in miscarriage or marking a return to singleness, where the other has no life to offer, but needs the grit of my hand on theirs to make the painful journey.)  There are seasons, and yet there is also a commitment in the seasons still, for the long haul, which makes the season what it is -- a season -- if the commitment to the walking and holding is still cherished and cared for by both people.

There are also relationships for ministry, for giving for service on behalf of Him who served.  Solely. And that's okay too.  But we cannot label friendship what is lack-luster, we cannot label community was is lacking.  We've got to get a right viewpoint, a stronghold, on what it actually looks like to commit to community, to call it for-real friends.

Which brings me to the little phrase "walking each other home" with regards to earth and heaven and hope.  (Kaitlyn Bouchillion in Even if Not: Living, Loving, and Learning in the in Between -- As quoted in Fierce Hearted on pg 48-49)

Now that is a beautiful truth, metaphor, and image.  Especially through the viewpoint of true friendship and hands.  And it creates a filtering factor for what is considered real, true community and friendship.  Who are the ones who are next to us, with us, spuring us, encouraging us, while holding our hands, and walking home.

There is a beautiful moment, a marking of space, when two people both reach out and fold their fingers around the other.  Both extend, both receive, both meet in the middle, but join two hearts and lives together, going the same way.  And with this hand holding, there is rest, there is held, there is love, there is grace.

There is steadfast.

My friend Trish and I were rolling 65 down the highway, deep in our mulling, desperate in our longings.  Both single and wishful, alone and vulnerable.  We let thoughts of friendship unfold in  that white Malibu, both admiting our hard, holy languish for true friendship, for companionship, for someone to call our own - our "other", our "go-to", our "person."  And we both felt the exposed tenderness of letting the other know the pining, the ache in our souls, the absolute loneliness and naked feeling of being needy.  And then, with a Mary Poppins style jaunt and matter-of-fact quip, I said, "Well, what if I catch you and you catch me?  Then we're both caught!"  She perked up, as if this "ah-ha" gave renewed energy, like a bright yellow daffoldi spurning out of ground in spring, and said, "Oh yes!  If we're both chasing, what if you chase me, and I chase you, and then we don't have to chase any more, because we're both caught!"

Ah, rest!  Caught.  Secured. Labeled clearly by the other person.  To call it and be accountable to it, but loved it in, known.

For the next several years we were each other's go-to.  The drive-to-school text or call, the Crisp corner club, blue dress at midnight dance, the first-morning-engaged coffee date, the maid-of-honor/bridesmaid.  Caught.  Rested.  Companioned.

Holding Hands.

We kept the phrase of "caught" with us those years, and added the word "with" to our repetoire, to life.  To do life with each other.  To do motherhood with each other.  To read good things with each other.  To write side by side with each other.  To carry our hopes and heartaches with each other.

Holding hands can only happen in the caught, the with.  Can only happen when both people are walking the same direction, carrying the same amount of commitment, willing to carry the pressure of the burden and dance the leap of joy.  All this can only happen, at least for the long haul, in the together, the hessed. (God's term for "with" in the Old Testament, term used for Ruth with Naomi, note Kelly Minter's Ruth study."

So I work through this, I rest in this.  Always disciphering, always pursing, often over-thinking, my eden-hope of holding hands.  Sometimes it looks like parking my car at my neighbors, kids locked in carseats, and standing on her stop shedding anger and tears and heartache in exchange for her hug and words and quick courage under the neediness of tears.  Sometimes it looks like Kelly's granola on my doorstep, or a text Heidi in Montana or Trish in the mountains.  Sometimes hands cross the miles through cards, and sometimes they cross the driveway kid-sharing.

I love the way the Lord has bestowed this image for me, has given scriptures and significance in this metaphor of holding hands.  But what I love most is the resolution of life with Him, "Nevertheless I am continually with you; You have taken hold of my right hand."   (Psalm 73:23)  Amen!

Hold Fast.

I grew up equating spiritual success with "spiritual high" -- like camp and conference experiences, when the mountain is all you know and what you love and God is so colorfully exalted, with people giddy and exclaiming and bursting with joyful emotion...  Yet the years age me, the experiences awaken me, and the God of all emotion teaches me....

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

I drove home quietly in the dark, heavy from Stories Night, ruminating on Jeremiah and lament and the actual tenacity and courage and strength to hold fast.

The women talked about abortion, about divorce, about death.  Lots of death.  They talked about hope and love and hardship.  About community and crying out.  About clinging to God, with bleeding fingernails gripping the cliff of faith, but that even if their faith fails and they fall, He is the Everlasting Arms that catches.

I couldn't help but land there.  On being caught by Him, in His strength, His love, His loyalty, in such immense hardship, betrayal, tragedy, or sin.  And about how maybe that is more spiritual than the mountain.  About how maybe that requires and pronounces more faith than the high.  That the low of lament might be the vulnerable nakedness that exposes the actual core of faith, or creates room for its roots to grow.

There is very little bragging, no room for pious, and all pretentiousness is slaughtered by the time one is crawling in lament, living in Jeremiah, appreciating Job.  When the heart of Psalms beats with the wounded, the miry clay is thick, but the faith that muddles through it is strengthened in the struggle.

Lament threads through those I know.  Through those I honor and adhere to.  Deep hurt, scars, pain, and loss transform the "put-together" person into an honest friend, a tearful warrior, a fierce believer.  The existence of hardship carves out soil for surety, and whittles one down to a shred where only God is secure, and even that relies on His faithfulness and promise, because the human adhering to him is weak and wearisome.

Yet the stories that gurgle out of the mud of gloom, that speak of heaven in the coffin of death, that learn to know His love in the lament, are ones that speak so powerfully, so deeply to the hearts of all the people.  Because to know, cling to, grasp, lean on, and hold fast to the God in lament, is the greatest reflection of courage and Christ the earth shall ever see.