Author: Jane Foard Thompson

Jane Foard Thompson is an inspirational speaker and award winning author and poet. A former Montessori teacher in Texas and Utah, for eight years Jane and her husband were missionaries in Honduras, Central America. After working for the American Red Cross in Idaho, they now live in Florida, where she writes, leads music and women's Bible studies at their church, and enjoys nine grandchildren and her Golden Retriever, Lily.

White knuckles

Every newborn with normal reflexes closes his hand over an offered finger. We start life grasping, and some of us don’t let go until our fingers are stilled. Why is it so hard to let go? It seems that as soon as I tear something out of my grasp, I find myself holding on to something else.

My grandchildren beg me to read a parable series about a raccoon named Adam and a lion, King Aren. In Adam Raccoon in Lost Woods, Adam gathers a heavy load of his possessions for their day in the woods, even though the king assures him he has prepared everything, and Adam’s stuff would only get in his way. Besides ruining the day, Adam’s ‘treasures’ put him in danger. After the king rescues him, Adam realizes the only thing he needs to hold on to is King Aron’s hand.

It’s a simple story, a simple lesson.

After eight years in Honduras, where people even save bottle caps to make shoe scrapers, and we had few possessions by US standards, I’ve tended to hold onto things I’m not using, but ‘might need someday’.

However, right now my closets and attic are overflowing with boxes of my mother’s that require sorting. They are the wake-up call I need to lean my stuff. ‘Piles to sort’ is not the legacy I want to leave to my children.

So I’m really trying to let go of things.

When trials come, whether huge ones like 911, or more personal ones like cancer striking a family member, it’s as if the lights come on. I see that what I’ve been holding onto isn’t keeping me safe, or whole, or loved. Like a kid with a rabbit’s foot, the stuff’s not really giving me what I need.

And there’s the rub.

“If you ask for things from life instead of from God, you ask amiss…” My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers

The strong bond between me and my stuff, as well as comfortable emotional states that no longer serve my life, reveal what I cling to for security. For years, God has been prying my white-knuckled hands off one idol after another.

This day, I surrender, once again, and reaffirm my desire to hold on to nothing but His hand.

Is there a habit of mind, a comfortable emotion, a special collection, any objects or patterns of life that are getting in the way of holding on to the only hand that can save you?

Driftwood by Jack H Thompson
Driftwood by Jack H Thompson with My Utmost for His Highest p 93

We are held

Today the journeys others are taking dwarf any difficulties in mine. In the past two weeks I’ve added heart-wrenching requests to my prayer list.

• A daughter has gone missing.
• A son has died in Afghanistan.
• A family is split by alcohol and selfishness.
• A mother of a one-month-old learns she has thyroid cancer.
• A young boy is badly injured by his father’s tractor.
• Three friends have fathers in the hospital with serious illnesses.
• Most of the kidnapped girls in Nairobi are still in the hands of their captors, or worse, have already been sold into slavery, or sex-trafficked.
• Another shooting on a college campus robs a life of future and promise.
• A young husband and father of three postpones the family’s annual summer mission work in Haiti to await his treatment for melanoma in lymph nodes. . . .

When I begin to pray, I feel like ranting at God.  Asking, “Why?”

It isn’t fair. It’s a sloppy, ugly world we live in.

For a moment, I sigh words from a poem I was enamored with in the ninth grade, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám LXXII

And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop’d we live and die,
Lift not your hands to It for help–for It
As impotently moves as you or I.

But I don’t stay there.

When the emotion is spent, I hear the echoes of the words of the psalmist centuries ago.

The enemy hunted me down;
he kicked me and stomped me within an inch of my life.
He put me in a black hole,
buried me like a corpse in that dungeon.
I sat there in despair, my spirit draining away,
my heart heavy, like lead.
I remembered the old days,
went over all you’ve done, pondered the ways you’ve worked,
Stretched out my hands to you,
as thirsty for you as a desert thirsty for rain. Psalm 143:3,4,6 The Message

We have an enemy that seeks to discourage us, beat us down, even kill us if possible. But Jesus came to destroy his power over us.

Keep a cool head. Stay alert. The Devil is poised to pounce, and would like nothing better than to catch you napping. Keep your guard up. You’re not the only ones plunged into these hard times. It’s the same with Christians all over the world. So keep a firm grip on the faith. The suffering won’t last forever. It won’t be long before this generous God who has great plans for us in Christ—eternal and glorious plans they are!—will have you put together and on your feet for good. He gets the last word; yes, he does. I Peter 5:8-11 The Message

I know it’s true.

Because I know the eyes that penetrated me with love when I couldn’t go on.

I know his words of reassurance when I wanted life to end, telling me there isn’t anything he can’t work in, as long as I am alive.

I know how it felt to have Him reach his hands out to me, pull me into a meet-the-needs-of-everything-in-me hug.

And I remind myself that this world, this life, is only a glimpse of the real thing, a tiny moment in all of eternity.

And that sometimes pain is our door.

But we are never alone in our pain.

We are held.

Settling into this journey

Last week’s post, Under Construction, was not about life as I’d like it to be, all pretty with bows on top. Surely after being a Christian for a very long time, even serving as a missionary in Honduras for eight years, you’d think I’d have all the kinks worked out, be as polished as the exterior I can present. After all, isn’t that the goal, being a great specimen for God?

Am I a failure because I’m not actually there yet?

If so, I’m in pretty good company, since Paul, who wrote the majority of the New Testament, said he still struggled.

But rather than being a painful time, as some might suppose, I’m loving the benefits of having to continually seek God for the healing path. 

And I am giving up my life-long quest for perfection and people-pleasing.

This week on Chris Fabry Live, T Davis Bunn talked about his latest novel, The Turning. He said the main character couldn’t pull his life together without a big change. After all, if he knew what to do, he would have already done it. He needed to learn to quiet himself, to listen to God’s voice.

And that is where The Healing Path is carrying me (aided by my broken hand), to try less and listen more. To give up the struggle to do more, and receive who I am in the love of the Great I Am. To hear the Voice of Life.

Where is your journey taking you?

Santiago by Jack H Thompson John 3:3
Santiago by Jack H Thompson
John 3:3