HOLY GRIT

(Post by: Madie Hobbs)

In November of last year, I wrote a rather vulnerable post about what my relationship with the Lord looked like at that time, and the only word I can now think of to even scratch the surface of that period in my life is strained. Strained to the point of snapping, breaking in two, caving in on oneself. I wrote to you of my wrestle with God as I navigated unrewarded obedience, it seemed.

I thought perhaps this post would consider a different subject, however, the Lord has recently been speaking to me about the very topic of wrestling yet again, as I continue my struggle.

Late last night, or rather incredibly early this morning I should say, I was sorting through my emails and trying to weed through what was and wasn’t important. Tension snaked through my body as I sat on the edge of my bed, trying to numb the thoughts in my head before sleep. As I sorted in the dark and quiet, I opened an email from someone I’ve been following for quite some time, who has often been a beacon of light when I find myself in the midst of suffering.

If I’m being honest, despite having been on her mailing list for some time, I have put off reading her posts for the last few months, often because I knew they would call me to seek a higher meaning for my pain and heartache. But last night, something was different.

I’d regressed, in a way, in my feelings of confusion and doubt, longing again for something I don’t have. In a way it made me feel like a failure. I had just sat at lunch with my best friend that afternoon, telling her I finally felt ready to accept some of the things she’d been saying to me for months and I wanted to move on with my life. Yet by the time we were driving home, I already felt myself reaching for the object of my sadness again.

But when I opened that email, later that night while I sat in the distress of the unknown, I read the subject line, which spoke of Jacob’s wrestling with God. If you want to know the truth, I sighed and kicked myself, knowing the Lord was already trying to regain my attention. For a second I didn’t want to read it. I wanted to wallow in self-pity and drown myself in mind-numbing doom scrolling.

Something made me read the email though.

In the post, she discusses some time she spent with her children reading the story of Jacob and God’s fateful encounter with him. The story is one I have heard her speak on many times, but she enlightened me once again to the richness of the story.

She argues that it is almost always a remarkably good thing to wrestle with God, because it forces us to put ourselves entirely in His hands. But she also points out that she believes the wrestling in this story was almost entirely Jacob’s. That, really, God was like a father trying to contain his young son while he thrashes about, kicking and clawing, searching for some semblance of control. The father stays, however, remarkably close to his son as he battles out his emotions and remains consistently stronger than the child.

Yet the Father is in the fray.

What she also pointed out which I was previously unaware of, is the connotation which comes with the Hebrew word for ‘wrestle’. A deeper meaning of the word translates to dusty. Doesn’t this just bring the picture of God and Jacob full circle in your mind? Here, the Creator of the Heavens and the earth, a divine and all-powerful Being, wrestling in the dust with the very thing He created from it. In this moment, He allowed Jacob’s dustiness to gather upon Him in another display of His unending and deepest desire to be near that which He loves.

What became apparent to me in this reading, which was not so evident when I last wrote to you about this topic, is that the wrestling I have endured over these last months has really been almost entirely my own. I have simply been circled by the arms of grace while my angst seeks an outlet, while my doubts seek confirmation. The Lord would never call me into misery. Yet here He stands with me, while my dust gathers upon Him.

“He bears our sorrows and carries our griefs. Our dustiness falls upon Him. There is more here to mull. The wound of yearning, of holy, gentled hunger we bear lifelong that is God’s limit upon the kind of wrestling which might destroy us. Jacob’s holy grit in his demand for the blessing… that perhaps was already given.” ~ Sarah Clarkson

What I have learned these past months is that the Lord respects holy grit. He respects a pursuit of answers, even if He may not be ready to give them yet. He respects it because in our wrestling, in our battling, in our angst, we allow ourselves to be held by the arms of Love, and we display our undying belief that He possesses the answers we seek.

I now merely pray my holy grit lasts out. For it is blessing I seek and blessing which my Father wishes to provide. 

SO, WHAT IS YOUR RESPONSE?

= How did this post impact you today?

= What are you going to do differently?