There’s been a lot going on lately. New home, new family member, new job. Lots of faces and details, long days and noisy nights. Beyond the business of a thick schedule though, there’s lurked the busyness of a heavy heart. Lots of questions. Lots of drawn out silence. Lots of time without a lot of words. And in all that quiet, I’ve found myself continually circling the idea of open and closed hands and how we treat what God has given us to hold in this very moment.

I see it like this: God places in each of our hands a number of things. People and relationships, roles and responsibilities, talent, opportunities and places. Sometimes, we know exactly what to do with those things. They feel like they were made to fit with us and it’s a joy just to have them – maybe because we know exactly what to do with them or maybe because we’ve just always wanted to hold them. We peer over our hands in delight because we know they are a gift and honor to have. We hold our hands flat and wide and steady, wanting to leave as much room and light for them to be and breathe. We want to tend to them well and do them not just justice, but beauty as well.

Of course then, there are also other times when we’re not totally sure why we’re holding what we’re holding. It just doesn’t make a lot of sense to us because they feel random or awkward or even worse, heavy or hurtful. They make us tired and we want nothing more than to turn our hands over quickly and shake until they fall.

The harder of two to sometimes hold, I think, are those things that we really, really love.

You see, those things that we really really love – well, sometimes we want them so much that we start curling our fists ever so slightly to keep them in place. Eventually, we think if we just cover them up, hand over hand, they’ll be safe. The gift, the person, the opportunity – if we simply hold them tight nothing will be able to reach them and nothing will allow them slide off.

But when we start living with our hands closed tightly around what God has given us, we stop giving those people and situations grace. We stop allowing them to move and shift and expand beyond what we can hold. And in grace’s place, we set demands and to dos and timetables. And eventually, closing our hands so tightly, those things start to lose the joy and life they once had, suffocating under our controlling white-knuckled grip because here’s the terrible truth: the closed fist allows God no room to move or even simply be.

After I moved home from Paris, I had my hands squeezed tight over the idea of being an adventurer. Fueled by a year and a half of of full-fledged, punch-drunk devotion to it, I was determined that my life would be wide and deep and compelling. I missed Paris desperately and felt from the inside out I had changed ten hundred ways since last living here. My fists curled around those ideas and the ways I had changed, and I hunched over them in an effort of protection. And what I discovered in the coming weeks was that I couldn’t sing in church – or anywhere for that matter. For weeks which turned into months, tears would slide as the music played. In closing my hand around what God had indeed put there, I also closed my heart to their development and progress.

More recently I keep finding myself wanting to close my hand over other people, not in selfish stubbornness, but in protection. Since July I’ve watched my brother and sister-in-law live mostly apart and in and out of hospitals, trying to figure out why their son, born three pounds and two ounces, can’t gain weight, watching as pieces of the puzzle keep slipping out of place instead of coming together. Watch as days turn into weeks and weeks into months with just tiny bits and pieces of progress. I want to scoop them all up and cover them in my hands and tell God No, not them. No longer can this go on. The thing is, even if I could do that, I would be robbing both of them of what God has chosen to put in their hands, taking away the story God wants to speak to them and through them not to mention all the ways He wants to send their roots deeper and set their hearts firmer in him.

We close our hands over plans and ideas. People and possibilities. Not because they’re bad, but because they’re good and because we want them to flourish. In doing that though, we’re also proving that we want them more than God and that we trust ourselves more than we trust him.

I have a friend who is a singer and a songwriter. In a similar way that words work for me, I imagine song lyrics are a well of life for her. A while back, something she really wanted fell out of her hand. Taken by surprise, grief and a heavy heart were left in its absence. And yet, just hours afterwards, she found herself on stage having to lead several hundred people into worship. Every song that played seemed to me, like a taunt to her stinging heart. Watching her sing word after word, song after song about God’s unending love, unmatched grace and complete faithfulness, it was like watching God kneel down, look her in the eyes and gently uncurl her hands, finger by finger so that they laid flat once again. He wants our hands open friends, because he has so much to give.

Open hands, open hands, open hands – these days, that’s what I’m trying to live by. And just so we’re clear, I have to remind myself fairly often – and by fairly often I mean every day, several times a day. Open hands with calling, open hands with people, open hands with situations and projects and timing. Open hands because he’s working, breathing, on the move. Open hands, because that’s where the light is, that’s where faith and joy are.

I want to hold my hands open to the God who loves me and be thankful for all that He places there. Knowing, believing, trusting that what He gives is good – truly and wholly. I want to hold my hands open, joyfully tending to what’s there with diligence, grace and wholehearted intention, forever remembering that it’s his grace that put it all there and that none of it may stay forever.

Open hands, open hands, open hands.

Open, open hands.