When I Think of Being Held By God
Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.
Psalm 139:7-12 ESV
In the spaces where glowy, romantic evenings and an abundance of laughter should have characterized the early days of my marriage, there was instead a heavy cloud of darkness and a general sense of foreboding.
We’re not always well prepared for how even the most beautiful of transitions require grace and often involve pain and discomfort in the stretching. Marriage, for me, meant the loss of friends, identity, and purpose while it also meant, at the same time, love, growth, and newness.
I expected the newness to blossom around us like tulips in the spring, all bright colors and eager expectation. What I found instead was the loneliness of misunderstanding and the pain of unresolved sin.
Those days unfolded one by one, the same way the days still do, but it felt like they limped by, and it felt like we were limping forward with them, aching for something better with no real plan for finding and grasping it. I know now that those particular days were marked by one of the darkest seasons of depression I’ve ever experienced. Those days wounded my husband for years with the deep-seated fear that I was beyond his help and things might never get better.
When I think of being held by God, I think of the beige carpet of our first apartment. I remember the night my husband was out late and I worshiped on my knees, face in my hands, with nothing left but desperate cries for help. I think of the wilderness I was sure God could never inhabit, and the way He reminded me tangibly that day how He was with me even there.
Back then, desperate and spent, in what I’d expected to be the happiest time of my life, I had no frame of reference for navigating such darkness. But neither was God floundering on my behalf during that season or any of the dark ones I’ve experienced since then.
Remembering His promise to “hem me in, behind and before, and lay [His] hand upon me” (Psalm 139:5) is like taking a deep, restorative breath of air. I hold on to this precious history I have with the God who shies away from nothing, who is surprised by nothing. I am grateful every single day that He is holding me in the middle of what is and what I’m still praying could be. His new mercies wrap around me like the warmth of a summer day and breathe life into my lungs each morning.
Praise Him, there is nowhere I could go where He hasn’t already been.
Questions for Reflection:
What does it mean to you to know that God hems you in, behind and before, and lays His hand upon you (Psalm 139:5)?
How does that help you understand His presence when you are facing a difficult time?
Write out a prayer thanking Him for His presence which goes before and behind you.