Hold You?
Psalm 121
When my heart grows heavy, I lift up my eyes again—always towards the mountains.
When deep waters rise above my head, will help come from higher ground?
You, God, are my mountain refuge, my lighthouse and lifeboat.
You made the valleys and high places, the oceans and sky,
and you hold everything in its place—even me.
Ancient of days, you are awake to every moment of my being.
You watch over me in the night as I sleep, keeping me cradled and still.
I have nothing to fear—not even the mighty sun or the moonlit night—
for you are my canopy of tree shade and my ever-glowing lantern.
The grasping hand of evil will never wrap its fingers around me,
for You are my safety and my life. You hold my hand and
wrap yourself around me like a promise ring,
guiding and guarding me with your shepherding presence
all of my days on earth and in heaven.
Drew’s mother used to read Psalm 121 during every airplane takeoff, and now he does the same. When we are on a flight together I look over at him and see his Bible open, his lips silently forming the words I know almost by heart. Psalm 121 is an invitation to look up from our circumstances and look towards our Protector. This is a childlike posture, for as adults we tend to think there is no one bigger or higher than ourselves and we assume that if help is to come from anywhere, it will be from within. So we keep our heads down and press on. We forget that we are children, still.
When Drew and I were dating, we found out that among other ‘coincidences’ such as being born on the exact same day of the exact same year (I’m older), we both shared a toddler habit of stretching our arms up and saying, “Hold you?” to whomever we wanted to hold us. My mom thinks it is because we were so used to our caregivers asking, “Do you want me to hold you?” that we assumed this question was the way to express our desire to be held. These days, “Hold you?” is sometimes a question Drew and I ask each other before sharing an embrace. It is humbling to admit I still need to be held—and I do. As we grow older, our layers of protection diminish and we are compelled to stand more and more on our own while assuming the responsibility of caring for others. When Drew lost his mom in 2019, he said it felt like a layer of protection was removed from him, leaving him raw and exposed. He’d lost someone who he knew he could always turn to, who would always be in his corner. He had lost his “Hold you?” person.
With its imagery of a safe, creative, and protective God who watches over us day and night, Psalm 121 reminds me that I will never lose my “Hold you?” person—the only One who still asks me if I want to be held and never lets go. Last week I wrote about shifting my posture from being used by God to being loved by God—which is often harder because it requires vulnerability and deeply uncomfortable transformation. Far different from the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps, kid” God that I somehow intuited while growing up, the Psalms speak to me of a tender and attentive parenting God, who shelters us with outstretched wings, who always has time to hold us, who sings us to sleep when we are hurt and scared.
You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.
Psalm 32:7
I can lean into the embrace of a love like this. I can learn to live in it, to stretch my arms up into the vastness of it and trust that my hands will be met, that my desire to be held will always be fulfilled and will never be too much. I’ve been asking God to untangle me from the hurts of human love and re-orient me towards perfect Trinitarian love, but it’s hard. I feel spiritually squirmy, like a child who cannot sit still in church and needs a coloring book. In our stairwell, Drew and I have placed a modern icon that depicts a young boy reaching up with a pair of strong and capable hands reaching down. It tells me everything I need to know about God and I am thankful for its daily reminder that dependence is holy. Dependence is holy.
So will you try praying “Hold you?” with me the next time words elude you because the longing, the hurt, the need is so deep?
You are never not seen, you are never not held, you are never more than a step away from the loving embrace of “Hold you?” May we live like that’s true today, forsaking the illusion of independence and exchanging it for the holy dependence of a child secure in their parent’s love.
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged.
They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead.
For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.
But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.
It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon.
It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.
It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
P.S. I will not be writing here for the month of August, but will resume posting again in September. Thank you, thank you for reading. Know that I experience your readership as a profound gift of hospitality. It gives me such joy and wonder and gratitude. <3