I love the hopeful newness of January. I like resolutions. Although, if you were raised to believe you had to honor your word, it is a little painful to promise yourself something and not follow through. So, I understand those who are dead-set against resolutions. Usually, though, resolutions are all the same things that you want to do all year long. So if you haven’t trained for that marathon, lost that weight, learned a new language, gotten sober, or written your memoir yet—you break those promises to yourself every month.
It just feels like a clean slate at the new year, and there’s something invigorating about the old-self applying to a different year in the past. Not a few days ago. It’s why I love to use this time of the year to throw away everything expired in my cupboards, fridge and cabinets. Let the bad fall away behind you and keep walking. Try again. Start over.
A marathon is not on my list this year. I never want to run one. But, a few years ago I was training to walk/run half-marathons. We were helping to raise money for AIDS orphanages in India through the ministry fiftytwo.4. If you haven’t trained six-months to run thirteen miles every Saturday in October, you may not know that the mental battle is more than half of the challenge. Sure, you train your body for endurance if you want to be able to move after each run. But you have no idea how many excuses a human can come up with until you’ve tried something uncomfortable that lasts more than one season. Though it got easier, I never did get a runner’s high, or enjoy running. I had to battle my mind at every practice run.
One time, a woman shared at our group training that God had spoken to her during her runs. He showed her she was clenching her hands too tightly. Not just literally—during the physical activity of running—but when she prayed to him while running. She was clinging to the things she loved. And it represented her fear that God would take them away from her. So, she was learning to run with her palms open and lifted to display her submission to God. So lovely!
As a side note: it’s recently become really impactful to me to understand that God gives us agency. He allows us to open or close to him. People like to joke about how God got their attention and made them do something. Feeling compelled to act for the pleasure that is peace with God is not the same as him making you do something. If you were raised in a religious home you might have been taught obedience more than the concept of daily choice: following God because you love him. Don’t confuse the control of manwith the draw of God. You can keep your life in your own hands.
Back to the runner’s hands: I’ve learned that when people say they’ve heard from God, I don’t need to let jealousy make me a skeptic. I just whine, “What about me, God? Do you have something for me?” That day on my run, I asked him if there was a message for me in her words. “Do I cling too tightly to the things and people I am afraid you will take away from me?”
The quick answer was no. But then I clearly heard, “But they are still clenched. You are afraid to let me give you good things.”
I looked down at my hands and tried to summon the courage to open to him. To allow God to give me good things that I might later be afraid of losing.
I’ve written about using hands in prayer before in These Ten Things. And I read a book last year, Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster, that suggested an exercise during prayer to lay your palms flat on your legs until you come to something that you need to give to the Lord. Then, you turn your hands over and visualize offering it up to him. It was really moving for one of my prayer partners.
I think the physical movement keeps you present. So instead of spinning in the fear and what if, your prayer a chant of “please, please God.” You acknowledge and name a thing you cannot control, and the mindful action pulls giving that thing to the Limitless God out of the symbolic, and into something more tangible.
There is a verse about hands in Proverbs which I used to see as a warning. It says a foolish woman tears down her house down with her own hands. It isn’t at all noble if a man destroys his sanctuary—he’s still a fool—so I do wonder why it says a woman. But Solomon had a lot wives, and polygamy benefits no one, so he’d probably seen it done a few times. Maybe it has something to do with the way a physical space reflects the spirit of the one who manages it, frequently a woman. I’m not talking about clutter, but if you are in pain and chaos in your brain—there will be tension in the home. Even if it isn’t your doing, or you aren’t allowed to be in control of your house, something ethereal about the room displays the space in your head.
However, even people who can’t sit still unless there’s chaos probably don’t want to tear their home down with their own hands. I think that’s the heart behind the statement in Proverbs.
But sometimes renovation is in order. Even with the structure that you think provides all your shelter—there is a time to build and a time to tear down.
Most of the lines in the song Poison and Wine by the Civil Wars feel like the barb twisting inside human love, but there is one line that especially applies here. “Your hands can heal. Your hands can bruise.”
Your hands can be used for good. Your hands can be used for bad. So, in addition to scrambling after new achievements this year, I think it’s worth contemplating your own hands.
Consider if your fingers are clenched too tight to receive from God. Are they squeezing the life out of the thing you want to control, but is not yours to manage? Are they mindfully holding on to what is important and you need to cling to… but loose enough to let something go, even though you love it?