Last night my youngest boy asked if he could pick me up, as he sometimes does.
I stared at him a bit because we were at a friend’s house and I didn’t feel like tenaciously clinging to his neck in midair. But I said yes. Before long he was demanding that I do not hang on, so there I was (46 year old mother and all that), trying to follow scary orders as he hoisted my body up and down for arm curls.
He’s headed to another state for his summer job soon, and I’m wondering how quiet the house will be as I do this empty nest thing for the very first time.
I’ve never lived alone so this feels a little odd. Sure, my oldest son is in the garage bedroom but this 120 year old house literally has just me in it.
My parents have seven girls and we all married. None of us ever thought divorce an option, but it happened to me, anyway. So, periodically at the end of a long work day I bring in some humor to the situation and snap a photo of a wine glass and book, or wine and bathtub, or some lovely food I’m eating along with “Perks of being single”.
I remind them that I get to relax while they cook dinner for their husbands. And it’s a little odd how we all laugh and cry over my reality because they all know, along with me, that I’d have done anything not to land in this boat.
I’m wondering what your thing is, and where your raft has taken you?
The mother who lost a child asked me, “How do I find joy in a life that seems deprived of what I wanted?”
And the world over, men and women grapple with a solid reality of grief that makes even noise go silent. The world stands still in an intermission between what was and what will be, while what is seems impossible to breathe through.
Silence can be deafening.
But I’m seeing this thing of identity as never before, how women find identity in being a wife, a mother, a daughter without ever finding it alone, first of all.
Did you know all the props can be taken from you and still, you’re fully known and fully loved?
That perhaps the props were taken from you so you’d lean into the greatest love you’d ever find, away from performance and people, alone in your bedroom where the Holy Spirit lets you know to look up, as if your eyes feast on the north star and you whisper it quietly, “God, you are my north star.”
That you can look away from people and fix your gaze past them onto something other worldly, that you can be gentle with yourself as you see the hand of God reaching for you, engraved on His hand and continually before Him.
Isaiah 49:16 says “Behold, I have engraved you on the palm of my hands; your walls are continually before me.”
Perhaps you’ve had a man engrave your name on a wooden beam or bridge, hoping to see it there years later. The man may or may not have worked out for you, but here, God says you are engraved on His hands. The hands crucified to the cross have you engraved there. You are continually before Him and forever will be.
I wonder why we look to people, places, or things for identity when God has His own hands marked with us.
I want us to settle our souls with nothing less because frankly, they won’t settle with less. If the root is God, the rest becomes desire rather than desperation–and hear me carefully on this–God given desire is HOLY, yet He remains your first Love.
My children are taller than me now, and busy with life. Has my identity changed, or am I less of a mother because they’re no longer sitting on the counter making cookies with me, drowning me in flour and potty training on the floor?
Am I less of a mother in a quiet, clean kitchen eating leftovers than I was when each meal was effort to make and serve?
The answer seems obvious but the feeling eludes us at times. We reach for humans while we forget that God is always reaching for us. That He has His hands marked with our name, so to speak.
When we fully see our identity apart from any human being, we can then reach back out for joy. In the long intermission between what was and what will be, we start hearing joy. I say hearing joy because we have to tune our ears for it.
The season I hoped to step in next was obviously not mine to have. I wrestle with this reality, sometimes brave and sometimes crying tears that fall too fast and heavy. We set our hopes on something, in someone, thinking this time we’re stepping through the door we always hoped for—and then, God says no.
PC: eye_of _serenity _photography
I want you to know sister, that he sees your hope deferred and how it makes your heart sick. I also want you to know that God’s no is always His better yes. Removing you from a situation not right for you is far more than Him saying no; it is His gentle invitation to something better, even if that something is nothing more than leaning into Christ wholeheartedly as you say yes to the wisest thing, rather than the wished-for thing.
Saying yes to God means saying yes to the best thing even if it feels otherwise at present.
But as surely as God is real, He has something for you. There’s a gift, a delight, something to savor from the hand of God.
What has He made you good at? Run after it.
What lights you up? Follow hard after it.
What has He always called you to? Remember that no man can stop it.
As surely as no man can stop you from your calling, so no man can stop you from being loved.
Now there’s the hardest question of all, but tell me this, dear reader. Was I less of a woman when my husband walked out the door to a teen aged girl?
Eight years later, I know the answer. In that moment, I was fully and deeply loved, as much as I’ll ever be. Did I feel it? Yes and no. God gifted me His presence but the devastation was so great I lay weeping on the floor.
But get this—in that very moment, fully and deeply loved, as much as I’ll ever be.
I want us to lift our gaze to the North star because it pulls us heaven ward where love is. Here, we are safe. Here, love won’t fail us. Here, absolute identity with certainty that never leaves even when people do.
God became so dear to me that if I allowed sin in me and felt His presence less, I’d be wrecked. I depended on the presence of God because I could no longer depend on anyone or anything else.
There, I found that was the love I was looking for, all along. And in some sense today, as my youngest child is soon to leave for the summer, my nest will never be empty because my heart is always full.
Full of love, that is. I get to transfer the love I receive from heaven onto those around me no matter where they are or what they’re doing.
I get to never lose my wonder. The wonder of love, that is. And as I do that, God continues to fill my life with what I need, and more. Not in my way, but His.
All because He loves me. And He loves you just as much.
Live in love, live engraved, lived marked, always before Him.
Love always,
Sara D.
Women of Purpose 