What Is Holding You Up Right Now?

Needing hope today? Feeling extra raw? Read this to remember what you can lean on to help hold you up while living inside a raging world.

It’s been a tender, devastating, heart sick week.

If I’m being honest?

I am at a loss for words.

The only words that feel appropriate to write are names.

Alexandria Aniyah Rubio, 10

Alithia Ramirez, 10

Amerie Jo Garza, 10

Annabell Guadalupe Rodriguez, 10

Eliahana Cruz Torres, 10

Eliana “Ellie” Garcia, 9

Eva Mireles, 44

Irma Garcia

Jackie Cazares, 10

Jailah Nicole Silguero, 10

Jayce Luevanos, 10

Jose Flores, 10

Layla Salazar, 10

Makenna Lee Elrod, 10

Maite Rodriguez

Miranda Mathis, 11

Nevaeh Bravo

Rojelio Torres, 10

Tess Marie Mata

Uziyah Garcia, 10

Xavier Lopez, 10

We are all at a great loss.

As a mother of a 10 year old girl.

As a parent who is privileged to tuck her children into bed tonight.

As a human…I am grieving.

And – You are too.

The truth is?

Wherever there is trust?

There is great risk.

Every single day, we lean on and into the normalcies and nuances that name our days.

Each morning, a calendar page stares back at us as we blink into the blur of the next box, a building brick of our next, best laid plans.

Filled in with milestones and markings of busy days that keep us moving into the next marked moment noted on the page.

The black line of the boxed days, holds the weeks together and links the lines that builds our life – stretched out.

Bridging the Monday to the Tuesday that works it’s way towards Wednesday – we hope.

The thing is?

That thin, inky black boxed line that leads us from our now to our next in this marked out map?

Is trust.

Trust that we will live, and our loved ones will live – to see tomorrow.

Yes, the thin black line that guides the grid, reads the story and informs our minds of how we will spend our time, from one day to the next?

Is penned and planned in the trust that is…

Risky faith –

That all will be o.k.

We walk out the door, into a building, holding out our hands and offering the most precious parts of ourselves.

And in the milliseconds of the movement forward?

The motion through?

That is when trust is transformed into the tightrope walk tensions, of living in a broken world –

with faith.

That walking out the door exchange, where trust grows legs and moves outside of us?

Away from us…

as we let go?

That is where – Trust takes off.

Lifting from the runway, and flying into the threatening skies of…

The handling of the day...

and all of it’s unknowns.

With trust, there is great risk – that all the bits and pieces that make up the minute to minute…

will all go according to plan.

But what happens when it doesn’t?

Friend – I wish I had more of an answer right now.

But this is what I know.

This is what is holding me up right now.

When my mind can’t make sense.

When my heart is cracked wide open.

When I watch the school bus roll away, carrying our daughters inside –

Trusting that it will return with them on it?

Love is holding me up right now.

Loving people.

When the world is on fire.

When there are tiny graves in Texas being dug.

When the water is rising.

When my legs are tired of treading.

When my eyes leak with large tears from buried over burdens.

I lean on love.

As believers – we are called to Love God and Love people.

And right now?

The only thing I can do that really feels like it’s making any difference?

Is loving on people.

Loving on people doesn’t need to be constructed from the pillars of grand gestures.

Loving people right now can be baked right into the smallest of the small seconds.

Loving people inside the small seconds of the sacred lines of our days looks like –

Being eye ball to eye ball available to the Target cashier, as she scans your items, asking how her day is, instead of scrolling the phone.

Dropping off a backyard bouquet from the garden to a friend’s doorstep and driving away.

Delivering a hug to the office of your best friend.

Giving an hour of time, to help that person who needs your touch with a work project.

Sending a get well card in the mail to the person who was recently discharged from the hospital.

Lingering longer to wave goodbye as they drive away.

Waving to the stranger on the street on your morning walk.

Holding your kids a little longer, than the night before.

Oh friend – how I think we are all in process of this tragedy.

And as we move through the shades of shouldering the emotions of this, should not have happened slaughter?

(that word makes me shudder and yet – it’s the only one that fits how I feel)

We need to know that –

What we believe will determine how we behave.

And I believe?

I believe we are called to be love in a lost world.

May we believe that the small acts of love will help to shape the days, inked out ahead of us.

May we believe that the small acts of love will shape our hearts and the hearts of others, into a posture of pause and prayer for our country and all of our people.

Friend, I’m taking a knee.

I hope you do to.

May we not become so desensitized that we distance ourselves from staring into the darkness that threatens our skies and do nothing.

But instead?

May we draw near to the One who can calm the storms of a raging world in need.

Our days are not decided and our weary bodies are not held up by the bold, straight edged, inky black lined, boxed in days on the calendar pages dotted with plans we want promised for tomorrow…

No.

Our heavy heads are lifted and held up by the wavy curves of love we decide to color inside the lines of today.

May we believe that love can hold us up right now.

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.”

1 JOhn 4:7 ESV

Living on a prayer,

Heather

Dear God,

You tell us in Your Word that Your Spirit intercedes for us through our wordless groans.

Father – I pray that you answer our cries for peace and for comfort. Hear our groans and aching hearts. Make Yourself known to us, so that we may feel Your presence afresh and overflow with your Spirit, reaching those that need to know that You are real.

God, please be near to those families that have suffered unimaginable loss and draw their hearts close to You.

Amen.

“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.  And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.”

romans 8:26-27 NIV