With Empty Hands...

 I get a text from a friend that has causes my heart to instantly pause... another precious family torn apart in so many ways - broken hearts shattered by unnamed things and painful stings and failure to let God into everything. She confides in me and tells me how it's all gone down these last weeks, and I just wish I could reach through the phone and hug her long. In moments like these, we just need to know arms will be there to catch us in our free-fall. I tell her I will be there for her aching heart and that I have no words. That my own soul hurts for them all. For the better part of a year now, I've walked with a different friend through much the same thing, and I am weary of the shattering. I know whatever I'm feeling they feel even more. 

Yet... the reply to this text surprises me just as much as the devastating news. Her posture, one of surrender to God even as she watches it fall apart around her. She tells me He is at work. That He's good and is still on the throne, and she can feel her confidence and faith growing everyday. She is preaching truth to herself, and I tell her to continue because this is how we fight the battles and the pressure: with the things we know are unshakably true. She adds that His blood prevails and covers all and that she trusts that He can redeem. That He's so good He can work even this for His glory. 

Truth be told, I am convicted. Because more than once, I've found myself in painful situations and I failed to repeat to my hurting heart what I know is true. I let the Deceiver tell me lies and my own head-voices speak falsehoods through the cries of anguish, and I didn't use my fighting words. I didn't harness the inner Spirit and do what I know to do, and I spiraled. You've probably been there also. But here is my friend - marriage in shambles, a dream devastatingly ripped apart, two young children innocently in the mix of it all - and she is choosing to stand with her Lord and thank Him ahead of time for whatever He will do and do so with empty, open hands. 

Tis the season to be grateful, and there are some finding themselves in a hard place where it feels impossible to thank God for things that seem so ugly and devoid of hope. When life as you knew it has been smashed into a million shards and you suddenly find yourself having begin again and write new chapters you never dreamed and utter laments in the form of silent screams and say goodbyes you still can't believe are real... what then? Do you gather the pieces and still choose to be grateful? In the spirit of the first Thanksgiving, do you thank God for five corn kernels and life for another day when everything around is speaking of death and endings and loss? 

We often think of Thanksgiving as a celebration of abundance, but its roots were born out of the most intense suffering imaginable and a group of faithful friends who dared to trust God's leading, even when it seemed they'd made a mistake in venturing to the New World in 1620. As cold drafts blew in their makeshift homes that first winter and most got sick or lay dying... as they buried more dead day after day... as they lived off the most meager fare and prayed for Spring to come with new hopes and fresh starts... still, they chose to bless God. 

Until recently, I had my string of Thanksgivings that felt like their own winters, too. Amidst the spread of turkey and fixings, my heart was heavy and gratitude felt hard to produce. God seemed distant, and pain felt close. As the room went around and counted their blessings, I struggled because my blessings in that season felt more like pipe dreams than tangible tokens of love. And yet, I somehow knew the presence of Jesus was there in it all. I couldn't always sense or feel it, but my heart knew He hadn't left. When all I wanted was to see the end of the canyon and know how much longer this valley of shadows would go on, I could point to the ways in which He was lamp to my feet and a light to my path (Psalm 119:105). It wasn't a light that showed me the whole way forward... just enough that I could see the next step. 

Somehow, walking with God in adversity leads you here - into places where you have no choice but to fall back on what you've believed to the true and straight into the loving space that is His forever-love, and you find hope emerging in the most surprising of ways. And the things you thought just might break you are, in some way, pulled together into a work of new art that only He could do. Not the same, but still good. Beauty redefined. And we get out of the fear that such darkness creates by saying thank-you to God ahead of time for the Grace that will hold us regardless of what happens. Even as the sufferings come at us, we can know that God, the Emmanuel-King, is coming after us even more, and He will never stop. Suffering eventually ends, but He never will. And the One who is most with us and who was willing to humble Himself into human form and enter our tattered world, is the One who still enters our brokenness today. 

And so we can come to the carb-laden table and partake of the food, joining millions as they do the same, and know that we are fully welcomed at an even greater table - that of the God of the Universe - and that we are held in all this pain by wounded Hands that feel what we feel and knew this would happen ahead of time. For whatever reason, He's taken us through it. And just as He knew there was no getting around or skipping over His own wounding on our behalf, He also knows there's a bigger resurrection waiting for you on the other side of this, too. This Thanksgiving may be hard, but God is still King and still good, and you are still loved. What more could you need in the end?