Where To Find Your Sanity

Because I talked to a young mom recently about stress, with the home schooling and the four little kids and the new puppy, I’m going to be brave enough to tell you there have been times in the last five days when I’ve thought I might fly apart from stress.

I’ve been enjoying everything I’ve been doing so much that I haven’t notice stress kind of sneak up on me, but here it is keeping me from getting a full breath and a full night of sleep.

Sometimes life is like that moist pumpkin bread that tasted so good going down, but evidently I was dropping pieces of it on the way to the car.

What is this? My husband said, examining the bottom of his shoe.

Oh nothing, just part of my world falling through the cracks of my fingers because it’s hard to hold onto.

It’s 2:07 a.m. as I am writing this. Insomnia came a few hours earlier than normal.

But I have a story to tell you.

At 1:40 I was awake, making one more turn on the pillow in hopes of finding a go-to-sleep spot, thinking of a few other people I encountered just yesterday who feel like they’re about to lose it. A verse from my Bible study came to mind. 

“He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:17 NIV)

Dear Jesus, do you hold it all together?

What if he doesn’t, and the stress of life can eventually fling our world apart?

Do you promise you hold it all together?

Finally giving up on sleep, I came downstairs to find words from Beth Moore in my inbox. She writes, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

Yes, God has these very words waiting for me, his Yes to my question.

“Name the name of Jesus,” Beth says.

The name is the glue.

In the same batch of email was a song from one of my readers. (Here I pause to say I need your words as much as you need mine.)

Listen to this, she says. Kari Jobe sings, “I just want to dwell on who you are. You’re beautiful to me.” In the middle of the night, I am confronted with the beautiful name of Jesus.

“We put no confidence in our flesh. We unleash every ounce of confidence we possess toward one game-changing, life-rearranging Name: The Lord Jesus Christ.”  -Beth Moore

When I was younger, I heard the story of a woman in our church who was dying of cancer. She said when the pain was intense she would say the name of Jesus over and over again. That’s what gave her strength to keep going.

We can’t hold ourselves together.

Only the steely arms of Jesus can wrap warm around the heart of a woman and keep her whole.