He Upholds Us When We Fall

Listen. Savor. Respond to God.

“The Lord upholds all those who fall and lifts up all those who are bowed down.” Psalm 145:14

We were in a long season of exhaustion and I had lost hope we would ever make it out. Andrew and I were struggling to make it through each day. We had had three children within four years and a church plant. At bedtime I would make out a schedule of fifteen minute increments: playdoh – 15 minutes, sand play 15 minutes, snack time 15 minutes, just in order to wake up feeling armed. Every day I would crumple it up knowing it was meaningless. We were leaning too heavily on each other because there was nowhere else to lean. Until we couldn’t anymore. We were depleted. There was nothing extra. Love felt thin as one of Aunt Margie’s hand-me-down sheets, see-through, brittle.

And so I would lay down. On the bed. On the floor. It didn’t matter.

When tempers were strong and love was thin I would lay down. Knowing God was holding both of us up. He was the ground of our marriage.

“For in Him we live and move and have our being” from Acts 17 merged with Paul Tillichs’ “God is the ground of our being” and I would lay down feeling the ground hold us up. Because I couldn’t anymore. But I could lay down intentionally knowing God was “upholding those of us who were falling.”

And a strange comfort would come. Grace catches us when we fall backwards.

I didn’t have any answers and yet I could depend on He who was the Answer. I didn’t have the energy to stand and yet I could fall…into God’s strong arms. Because the ground always held and God always held even when I didn’t have the strength to carry us.

Where do you need to be held up today? Where do you feel as though you are falling?