Held.

“God protects us from nothing, but sustains us in all things.”

~ James Finley

I was with a group of six guys last weekend when someone asked how many times each of us had moved houses in our lives. I had never counted the number before, but apparently I “won” with 11 different homes in my life, not counting apartments. Hmm. In just about every list of top life-stressors, you’ll find moving in the list. Can you remember the last time you moved? What was that like for you?

For a few weeks I have been feeling generally unsettled, but it wasn’t until this morning that I got to unpack what I was feeling in my journal. Guess what I noticed: lots of moving! Take a look… Next month my parents are moving. Probably this summer my in-laws will be moving. My daughter Ashley is talking about moving (not across town but across the pond to join her sister in the Netherlands!). My son and his wife just started travel nursing and will be moving every three months. More personally, Kellie and I are now trying to move (across town) and perhaps buy some land and build. On top of all the moving, we’re traveling to 14 different locations in May, June, and July. Where are the guys with the white jackets and straps?

Change comes more easily for some than others, but at some level it adds pressure to everyone. It also serves as an immediate reality check on whether our inner stability is circumstantial—based on how buffered and predictable life feels—or whether we’re rooted more deeply in things that can never change. Things like our divine belovedness. We’d like to think that’s always the solid rock under our feet, but it’s easy to fool ourselves and functionally place our security in the job, the bank account, our core relationships, and just the general stability of life. It’s not until some or all of those things get shaken that we know for sure where the anchor lies.

The mystics have a term for circumstance change; they call it liminal space. Liminal is from the Latin word limen that means threshold. It’s a crossing over, a space of transition from one thing to the next… but the liminal part is the space inbetween, the space where you’ve left one known dimension but not yet landed in the next one. By definition, it feels awkward, uncertain, uncharted, maybe even dangerous.

Liminal space is also where the possibility for inner transformation can occur like none other. To be clear, change—even dramatic, painful change—does not force us into inner transformation. That’s not the way God works with us, ever. But it does open the door. Actual interior change hinges entirely on how we respond to the discomfort.

As always, we have a choice, and generally that choice is between attempts, usually subconscious, to power up on life and exert control on those unruly circumstances… versus the option of embracing our vulnerability and leaning hard into trust. The larger quote from Finley at the top goes like this: But if we are absolutely grounded in the absolute love of God that protects us from nothing, even as it sustains us in all things, it grounds us to face all things with courage and tenderness.

For myself, I’m actively trying to pay attention to these potential changes. Most of them are outside my control entirely, so the invitation is simply surrender, acceptance, and trust. For the decisions that are within our control, it invites discernment: What is God drawing us toward? What is our sense of divine timing? How do we interpret circumstances that either fall neatly into place or seem to complicate things? We not only have to trust the stuff “out there;” we have to trust the stuff “in here”—trust our ability to hear what God is saying and to follow the Holy Flow.

In a word, I want to feel held. I want to feel, not just believe, that there is no external upheaval that need unroot me internally. Can you imagine that for you too? I think that’s exactly the grace God intends to bring to us as we pay attention to the Holy, pay attention to our own reactions, and consciously open our hearts to whatever comes.

growing the soul

What’s changing in your world right now, and how are you feeling about those changes? Hold this question about where your security comes from before the gentle gaze of the Spirit, and feel the embrace of the Trinity.

serving the world

Now expand this practice beyond your personal drama and toward the world at large. Instead of being angry or fearful, we can be a force for love and healing. In partnership with God, we can actually hold the world in our embrace too.

takeaway

Hold… and be held.