On Hold, #1

It’s finally time to talk about how this blog got its name.  As perhaps you have guessed, not all of my life has been easy.  Most of the hard parts were due to the fact that I took them hard or made them hard for myself by my own attitude.  That aside, it is important to acknowledge that I’ve had a lot of help and support along the way. 

Years ago a friend of mine and I had a small gesture of sign language that helped us let each other know we were going through a hard time, but that we would be ok  (Thanks, Paula, wherever you are.  I hope you are so very blessed!).  It was Paula, a two-time cancer survivor, who first used it.  I had inquired as to how she was doing, and for an answer, she curled her hand into a hard fist and jerked it down in front of her.  At my questioning look, she said “that’s the knot at the end of the rope.”

Ah.  I got it.  No doubt you’ve heard the saying “when you’ve reached the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on!”  From then on, we used that sign language to share with one another that life was hard, but we were making it, and we would appreciate hugs and prayers.

This spring I traveled to visit my daughter, who has moved a thousand miles away from me.  As soon as I arrived, she presented me with my birthday present, which she had been working on for some time.

Understand, before I tell you what the gift was, that this daughter (as well as my other 3 children) have helped me walk through some of the very toughest of the tough times in my life.  We’ve walked through them together, shoulder-to-shoulder.  When one man got weak or went down, the others shouldered up under him until he could walk on his own again.  Many times that weak or down man was me.  At times, I’ve been very, very close to the edge of the darkness. 

So the framed cross stitch that I unwrapped there in her living room, fashioned in my favorite colors, quoting my favorite verses, meant a lot to me.  It consisted of the pattern of the cross and runes you see above, along with Hebrews 10:23;

“Let us hold fast the confession of our faith without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”

Along with another of my favorite verses.

I looked up the definition of “hold” in the dictionary.  This word has a plethora of meanings, and we’ll eventually be talking about a lot of these definitions here at the HoldFast, but the very first one is as follows:

“grasp something:  to take something firmly and retain it in the hand or arms.”

Yet again today I have learned for the umpteenth time that one cannot hold onto the knot at the end of the rope without letting go of anything else on which one might have a grip.  To hold onto the knot, one has to let go of anything less precious than your life (beloved, your life is hid with Christ in God).  Not one penny, one flower, one precious box of memories, one single moment of personal glory can be retained in the hands if they are to grasp the knot in the rope firmly enough.

I am reminded of the scene in The Lord of the Rings:  The Return of the King where Frodo has fallen over the ledge; below him, the fires of Mount Doom.  Above him, a life carrying the great weight of the loss of the One Ring.  He hangs by his one undamaged hand over the abyss.  And through the magic of cinema, you can see him decide to choose life.  With a huge effort of will and body, he throws his damaged hand up to grab onto Sam’s arm and be pulled to safety, and eventually home to Hobbiton, and thence on, after a time, into the West…a green land of endless happiness and total healing.

Anything he held in that hand would have kept him from grasping the hand of his friend.  And the grasp for life itself was painful, using the hand from which he had just lost a finger.  Without the emptiness of the hand and willingness to grasp the pain, the happy ending wouldn’t have been.

What is it that you need to let go of in order to hold onto the Knot???

“Let us hold fast the confession of our faith without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”

Hold Fast.