Tightrope.

I recently posted on my Instagram about what I’ve been struggling with recently. I’ve been in a season of uncertainty. So much of my life seems unresolved, unsettled, and unstable.

It feels as though for the last eight weeks I’ve been walking across a tightrope.

With each step I take, I am less certain. I don’t know if I’m getting closer to the end, to safety, or climbing higher only to fall harder.

What I do know is that from the moment I stepped onto the tightrope, I closed my eyes tightly and have fought to keep from opening them.

I refuse to look at the end, at the goodness that may be just around the corner, because the scarred parts of me are constantly whispering that I may not get there, and if I get my hopes up it will only be worse. They whisper that hope is not only not worth it – but it is suicide.

And I sure as hell can’t look down. Looking down – acknowledging how far I could fall – would mean admitting just how vulnerable and exposed I am right now.

So this was my plan – keep going. Eyes shut, head down. Wait. Things will resolve themselves eventually, and one way or another, someday I’ll be able to look up again.

But last week, my plan started to crack. I started to look down.

I saw just how much I have to lose. How much this plan of mine has not only failed to protect me from being hurt, but actually warped my view of this tightrope that I find myself on.

So much so that I stopped taking steps altogether. I stood, frozen, in the middle of the tightrope. Eyes closed, hands pressed into fists. Feeling like maybe, if I just held on tight enough and waited, I wouldn’t have to step out any further.

And in the back of my head, the Voice that loves me whispered, “open hands.”

and it wrecked me.

Open hands is how I started this. It’s how I live my life when I am the truest version of myself. Open hands is a white-flag mindset. A position of constant surrender. Of intentionally creating space for things and people to enter into my life without trapping them out of fear.

I close my hands when I’m scared to lose something. White knuckles, gritted teeth, anxious heart – it is in those moments that insecurity takes root and grows quickly. Closed hands are formed out of fear, and are a breeding ground for lies, self-sabotage, and anxiety.

But open hands is FREEDOM. It’s trusting my Savior, trusting the process, and knowing that no matter what, He is good. It’s not a false sense of security in temporary things. It’s a peace and a confidence that if I fell off the tightrope tomorrow, He would catch me. It’s an assurance in the promise.

Open hands, open eyes, open heart.

somewhere along the tightrope, I forgot that I didn’t have to look down, and I didn’t have to look forward, and I didn’t have to close my eyes.

I forgot to look up.

I forgot that I wasn’t actually supposed to do this alone.

Open hands. Open eyes.

I’m still scared. I am still vulnerable. I’m still figuring out how to do this – what it means to live with open hands when I am certainly not an unbiased heart.

I don’t know what the end of the rope looks like for me, or even if I’ll make it all the way across.

but my chin is up. my eyes are open; fixed firmly on the Cross. I will raise my hands and trust. the Lord is good. & I am his.

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” Galatians 2:20