What's in Your Hands?

Remembering G-d is faithful when what you hold feels insufficient.

I’m writing a book called Oxygen Mask, Please. It is for women carrying more than they were

meant to carry.

In it, I am inviting them to consider what they are holding onto: the worry, the care, the fear—things they may be gripping so tightly that it is getting harder for them to breathe.

And I am asking them to surrender it. To trust that G-d will receive it. To know that He is already at work.

But writing those words caused me to stop and ask if I’d taken my own advice:

What might I be holding in my own hands?

What worry? What problem? What fear have I held onto instead of faithfully placing it before the Lord?

Recently, the answer has involved a whole lotta hair.

My hair.

I never realized how much I appreciated it, or how much comfort it gave me. Then, in late August, over the span of about two weeks, I lost nearly half of it.

Writing this article, as I prepared to admit my hypocrisy to you, I remembered other hair: My toddler’s shaved head as he was undergoing chemotherapy. That hit me pretty hard too. Harder than the IVs and the medicines with impossible-to-pronounce names.

Who knew I had such a thing for hair?!

But all kidding aside, my own hair loss has made me stop and think.

It has made me remember.

Hair Carries a Story

When my mom shaved my son’s head, she did it to spare me the horror of watching it slowly fall out. Yet it was not merely the absence of his hair that staggered me. It was its visible reminder that something terrifying was happening to the child that I loved. It brought grief. It brought fear. It brought all the questions I did not know how to ask and it reminded me of the challenges I certainly could not answer.

But when I look at my own hair now, gathered in the bathroom sink, fear is not the only thing I remember of that time. Or the loneliness, powerlessness, and grief. What I remember is how G-d saw us through.

I remember the people He placed around us: the ones who prayed, showed up, encouraged us, carried practical burdens, and held us up when we were too tired to stand on our own.

I remember provision arriving in ways we could not have arranged: The cleaning lady, the cards, a friend keeping my daughter and finding a way to get her to and from school. I remember my son getting accepted into an experimental drug trial and then promptly being kicked out again because he’d experienced the kind of healing doctors called impossible.

I do not share this lightly. I do not say it because our story was easy, or because I believe every hard thing is secretly good. It was not easy. There were days marked by grief and fear. Cancer? It was not good.

But G-d was present in all of it.

What He gave us in those days was not always what I would have chosen. It did not make the fear disappear. It did not make the grief go away.

But what He gave us was enough.

More than enough, in fact.

His presence, and all the people and things He arranged around us. Somehow, inexplicably, He brought good in the midst of it.

So when I see what I have lost now, I see it as an invitation to remember what has been given. Not to pretend I am unafraid. Not to minimize the questions I still carry. But to remember that I have been afraid before, and G-d? He somehow made it good.

The Staff in Moses’ Hand

The words “What is in your hand?” came to me this morning. Strange, I know. But then the words came again and I realized they sounded familiar. Where had I heard this reference before?

So, I looked it up and to my surprise, it was an exact quote from Exodus 4. G-d had called Moses to do something monumental: go to Pharaoh, demand freedom and then lead the Israelites out of Egypt. If you know the passage, you remember; Moses is overwhelmed. He questions his credibility, his capability, and his speech. He tells G-d he is simply not equipped for the assignment.

Not always big on long explanations, the LORD asks him, “What is that in your hand?”

I imagine a pause. Maybe Moses looks at his hand in confusion.

Um, LORD? It’s a stick.

What could it possibly have to do with Pharaoh and everything You’re asking of me?

But sometimes a demonstration is better than any explanation. The LORD tells Moses to throw it to the ground. It becomes a snake. Then the Lord tells Moses to take it by the tail, and it becomes a staff again.

For years, I have read that scene and understood it as G-d’s answer to Moses’s fears of incapacity. I believed He had gifted Moses with supernatural power for the road ahead.

But I see something more now.

G-d is not telling Moses to search within himself for the power to solve the problem. He is not saying, “Moses, you now have everything you need.”

Instead, He is saying, “I Am.”

The staff itself is not the point. G-d is.

Not, “You will be enough on your own.”

But, “I will be with you. And I Am.”

The Same Old Staff

Maybe this is another part of what G-d was doing with Moses: The staff in his hand was ordinary, but it was not meaningless. It was something familiar from the life Moses had already lived, a shepherd’s tool carried through ordinary days in the wilderness.

G-d did not ask Moses to manufacture power out of himself. He asked Moses to notice what was already there, then to trust the One who could use that ordinary thing for His purposes.

Later in the story, Moses finds himself trapped between Pharaoh’s army and the Red Sea. The people panic. There is nowhere to go.

I can imagine Moses looking around, wondering what to do. Then the LORD tells him to lift up his staff and stretch out his hand over the sea.

What if it was that same old stick?

By then it would have been weathered from travel. Banged up from the wilderness. Still, just a humble shepherd’s staff.

But Moses had learned something about that staff: It was not the staff itself that was special, but that G-d had used it through Moses.

And G-d did.

He used that staff as Moses obeyed Him, and He parted an entire sea.

Ah, this? This is how it’s done.

Not by finding the power within ourselves, but by allowing Him to use what is already in our hands.

So, What’s in Your Hands Today?

As I have asked others to be wise, to release their cares, and to trust Him with what they cannot control, I am learning to do the same.

My hands? OK my bathroom sink, it held hair. But for me, that hair did not have to mean something terrible was coming. It reminded me what G-d can do, if only I make room for Him.

He goes from glory to glory.

And I? Moment by moment.

Surrender by surrender.

It does not necessarily get easier. I still suffer. I still feel disappointment. There are moments when I look at what I have lost and feel afraid of what else I might lose.

But it is becoming easier to see Him in it.

I am learning that I am not enough. That my life and my health can’t be secured by my effort. Nor are they guaranteed by my obedience. Sometimes things are just not going to be good.

But He is.

He is good. And He is enough.

So I am asking myself: What is in my hands today?

And then, not merely, “What can I do with it?”

But, “What might G-d do with it. And how might He use it if I place it in His hands?”

Well, today I have an iPhone in my hands. I have words. I have a story that’s still unfolding. I have a body that is not doing everything I wish it would do, yet it is still carrying me through this day.

My prayer is that G-d will use this iPhone to reach someone who needs encouragement.

Maybe someone who is not like me at all.

Or maybe someone exactly like me: someone staring at clumps of her hair in the bathroom sink or who is receiving an unwelcome diagnosis. Maybe she is worrying about the future. Maybe she… maybe she, after reading this, will turn again, look at what she holds, and realize, with Him, it can be enough.

Enough for faithfulness.

Enough for obedience.

And, if He chooses, enough even for a miracle.

So humbly, I ask:

What’s in your hands today?

And how might you offer it to the great I Am?