Empty Hands

Don't miss this week's podcast, "God Will Provide" on "When God Stoops Down."

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Empty Hands

“My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.” Psalm 63:8 (NIV)

“You’ve got your hands full.” It’s a phrase I hear often – at the park, the grocery store… everywhere I go. I’m not sure what it means… does it mean my kids are being unruly? Does it mean I look tired and haggard? Probably all of those. Yes, sometimes my kids are a little wild. More than often, I am absolutely exhausted.

But my response to this phrase is always the same. When I hear, “you have your hands full,” I always reply back, “Yes, but once my hands were empty.”

I would rather have full hands than empty ones.

When you waited as long as I did to have babies, you don’t mind the tired days and the wild shenanigans in public. The awful bedtime routines and the miserable dinners where nobody is happy about meatloaf are just part of the days. It’s part of the dream I was dreaming for so many years. I might be exhausted on the surface, but I’m deeply thankful in my heart. Not a day goes by that I’m not extremely appreciative of this incredible life I get to live.

I used to dream about someone calling me "mama." I admit, sometimes I get annoyed at the constant, "MAMA"s, but even that is part of the goodness. I fail. I forget. I lose my temper. I drop the things in my hands, and my heart, when things get TOO full, but I would still always rather have full hands.

I remember though how my hands felt when they were empty.

Recently a sweet friend of mine reached out to confide that she has been praying for children and it hasn’t happened yet. She reached out to ask me how I dealt with the loneliness I felt during the five and a half years when I waited for babies. I had no good answer. I didn’t always wait well. It was a struggle. And I certainly can’t promise her that babies will one day come, like they did for me. I too was very unsure in that stage of life. There are never any guarantees that God will grant us our requests in the way that we hope they will come. So what words are there to possibly give someone whose hands are empty?

The truth is that empty hands weigh much heavier than full ones.

I remember my empty hands. This caused me to realize, and feel it deeply, that one day they will be empty again. My children will leave and I will quit hearing the phrase, “you must have your hands full.” I will awake at night not knowing that my children are sound asleep upstairs. I won’t be able to go kiss them while they sleep and then go back to my bed, peacefully knowing my home will soon awake with life and love abounding. For all of us, seasons of fullness and seasons of emptiness come and go, come and go.

I remember the loss I felt when two of our babies died before I could meet them. I think about my mother who lost a daughter after forty years of loving her as only a mama can love. How much emptier her hands must have felt.

That same child, my sister, was my very best friend.  We were only thirteen months apart, so there was never a time in my life when I don’t remember her tagging along beside me. I was holding her hand when she left me and I will never be able to adequately describe the pain of sitting beside her, grasping the hand of someone who is no longer present. I could feel her, but she could no longer feel me, at least not in the physical sense. When we experience such loss, our hands never feel quite as full again. The loss goes with us wherever we go.

Broken marriages, crushed dreams, uncertain futures, health challenges… all things that can be a challenge as we hold on to something that is no longer ours to hold on to.

What do you do when your hands feel empty? Do you clutch them tighter to you? Or do you open up your hands to receive joy and love again? It seems impossible because we know what we are missing there. Where we look to see the things we cherish, we only see the emptiness that others cannot see. We are hesitant to open our hands wide because we do not want to ever replace those things or those people we have lost, nor can we.

Our hands though are never really empty, because whether or not we realize it, we are either holding on to grief, to loneliness, to fear, to doubt, to a lack of confidence, to disbelief, or we are holding on to joy, to hope, to trust, to belief, to promises, to love. The confusing part of being human is that often we hold on to both.

While I was waiting for children, I felt grief, but I also had to slowly learn how to find peace and joy in the hands that were given to me, not in the ones I was longing for.

Open your hands and fill them with God’s hands. One of my favorite parts of God is His personal touch. He knows when we stumble and can use a hand to hold onto. He knows when we are sitting in the dark and need to be held. He knows when our hands are empty, and He reaches out towards us. Don’t miss the beauty that HE reaches out toward US. “With an outstretched arm” (a phrase we see almost twenty times in the Old Testament), God is keeping His hands open for yours to be placed there.

“For I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you.” Isaiah 41:13 (NIV)

“My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.” Psalm 63:8 (NIV)

“With a mighty hand and outstretched arm; His love endures forever.” Psalm 136:12 (NIV)

Across the span of heaven and of time, of flesh and of Spirit, God Himself is reaching to your corner of grief and of loss to place His hands in yours.

A child looks unsurely to their parent as the parent holds out an open hand and asks, “Do you trust me?” Do you trust Him? We can walk with confidence towards hope and healing when our hands are full with the love of a Christ who put His hands on a cross to take on the fullness of our true loss and grief. There is no one more worthy to fill our hands.

Even my full hands OFTEN need to be emptied to be placed in Christ’s. It is when I am holding on to Him that I find my own solid footing and remember where my trust is placed. He reaches out to me daily to say, “I am here. I am near. You are not alone.”

When God Himself reaches His long, loving arm from heaven to our hearts, what other option is there but to hold on and hold on tight? Then we find our hands are fully in His and there we can rest.