“Hold still, don’t run. You’ll never find the love you want if you take off when it gets real, you wanna be held, you gotta hold still.” – Taylor Leonhardt
Melodramatic as it sounds, thirty is fast approaching and with it, the culmination of my worst childhood fears: I was going to be thirty, single, and still living at home. That had truly been my nightmare as a teenager. If I’d let it, it had the power to keep me up at night worrying about it. For all the good it did me.
Something about being alone, however, often has a way of amplifying the voids in your life God wants to fill that you might have otherwise been unaware of.
This year I’ve been doing a leadership development course with Arrow Leadership, and while leadership on the surface seems to be about what you do, Arrow makes it clear that leadership comes from who you are. So who was I? I remember tears coming to my eyes on my first residential, sitting in the foyer at dusk with a fellow participant who was sharing his story of burnout and God confronting him with the fact he didn’t truly believe God loved him. Ouch. I felt the twang of something true go off in my spirit. I was exhausted from serving. Should someone who was at rest in the love of God be feeling like that? Unlikely. While I felt like the time to hit pause at that residential gave God the space to rewire some of the tangled up parts of my soul, I still had a long way to go.
My challenges with work and the insecurities that flared as a result brought me back to that same exhausted place a mere few months after those revelations, and after serving on Leadership Conference in July I was in desperate need of a break and some fun. By an absolute stroke of God’s grace, the snow trip my friends and I had planned from the beginning of the year was able to go ahead despite all the COVID and lockdown scariness, and we spent six blissful days on the slopes of Perisher in the peak of the season. I couldn’t remember a time before when I had been so happy. Good food, plenty of laughs, the thrill of getting to ski again, and be in fellowship with such fantastic company felt like a slice of heaven. I drank up every drop of that high, and went home intensely grateful.
The only problem with a high, is that inevitably, a low must follow. Which it did.
“You’ve heard it all before; the tired metaphors don’t move you anymore, you’re out of tears. If you get cold enough, maybe come close enough to let somebody love you; maybe Me.”
The week in lieu I’d put aside to rest and recover from my trip to the snow was spent grieving a risk I took that ended with what felt like a slammed door to the face rather than the opportunity I had been hoping for. I was truly shattered. While not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, the pain was raw and the feelings of inadequacy swamped my heart enough for it to run aground on that question again: who am I?
So maybe that was why I was in front of the mirror, pulling out grey hair, reflecting on the past ten years of my life and wondering why I still didn’t know who the heck I was. I’d arrived back at the empty house with an emptier heart and sad eyes, and the silence seemed to whisper the question to me: “who are you?” That night I shared with my leadership partner over Zoom my struggles, and she too, managed to place her finger on the wound.
“You know who God says you are in your head, but who do you say you are?”
I didn’t know how to answer her. The question haunted me for weeks. It felt as though everywhere and everyone else I looked at could be seen clearly and in focus. Yet the second my gaze turned inward, my vision became blurry and everything was indistinct. I sat for quiet hours in stillness on the floor of the living room; Bible open on the coffee table, curtains back to allow the sun to stream in, murmuring prayers and marvelling at what a beating the heart can take and still have the perseverance to go on beating.
It was in the middle of all this when NEEDTOBREATHE released a new album called Into The Mystery (yet another grace: God always provides the music I need the moment I need it). It captured the very essence of what it meant to be an innocent child, untainted by the world and full of wonder at its beautiful possibilities. It hurt to listen to. I’ve talked about my complex love/hate relationship with my childhood before. As I was grappling with learning who I am, this album on repeat achingly reminded me of the child I was, and how much I missed her. When we were young and we were undefeated, the line sang. Argh, how I missed being undefeated. I felt defeated in work, in love, in life. Again, the greatest fear of thirty, single, and living at home mocked me from just around the corner. Three strikes, you’re out. Dumb as it is (because believe it or not, I do know my life won’t end at thirty!), I was feeling the impending weight of that last strike teenage-me had cursed me with.
These were the songs frequently pumping in my ears when I went running. I don’t know when I fell in love with running or when it turned into a need, rather than an obligation. But it got so that when my head was full of voices, my heart was full of emptiness, or work got to be too much, running became my answer. Spring came early to Ashtonfield, and so golden hour was warm and sweet, and the deep orange of the sun at dusk flooded the streets with glory. I craved the beauty. I needed it. Three times a week, often more wherever I could fit it in, I would hit the pavement and breathe a sigh of delight and relief, reveling in the feeling of my feet moving beneath me. I had the fleeting thought that maybe I was running from all my problems, but I pushed it away. Exercise is exercise, I told myself.
“Everybody has to land sometimes. You’re born to fly, I know. I’ve been watching from the ground. Sending smoke signals in case you need a little sign it’s safe to come down.”
Springtime had arrived, and gardens were blooming everywhere. For some reason, most of my cherished childhood memories are always accompanied by the smell of blooming Jasmine flowers, and there is no scent that holds a stronger sense of nostalgia for me. In Ashtonfield, I don’t think there is a single street that doesn’t have it growing somewhere. So every evening when I went running, the air was thick with the rich smell of my namesake, everywhere I went. The irony was not lost on me. Here I was, out running; running away from the problem of who I was, and the scent that bore my name was in every breath I breathed.
I literally could not run away from myself if I tried.
Sitting in silent sadness at the piano one night, I flipped open my iPad on the music stand and spontaneously selected a video I had sent to Olivia earlier that year. It was an excerpt from Andrew Peterson’s Resurrection Letters Easter tour, and one of the openers was a young woman by the name of Taylor Leonhardt. Even though I’d listened to this song before, it felt like I was hearing it for the first time, and I sat there—crying—as the words washed over me. Hold still, don’t run. You’ll never find the love you want if you take off when it gets real, you wanna be held, you gotta hold still. I might have started running for exercise, but I think I’ve been running for many years in other ways. Running from my fears, running from good memories, running to serve others and forgetting that all I really want is to be loved and held; and I already am. Gosh. Why is that so hard to learn? To grasp? For it to move from my head down into my gut where nothing can shake it?
It’s hard because I’ve got to be still. To stop. Conversations with my leadership partner about rest felt like ripping all the bandaids and scabs to boot. Everything I learned on my Arrow residential about spiritual practises and rest; what one of the speakers said to me about “find your milk crate”; a place to sit and be until you remember who you are—I know how necessary it all is in my head, but do I gear my heart and my life towards it? Just stopping to know I’m loved, and letting that be enough? Barely. Yet everything I do flows from the person that I am, and I can only know who that is when I sit and be still long enough to know who He is, and who He says I am.
“No shame in coming back from all that greener grass, turns out you never lacked a thing.”
After hearing Taylor’s song live, I eagerly waited for her new album to drop. When her song Poetry first released, I was driving home with it on loop, sobbing the whole way. It came right in the middle of that intense time of disappointment and was akin to a friend taking my hand. I knew that when “Hold Still” came out, it would be the next hand to guide me on from here. Weird, yes, I know. But it truly is amazing the level of grace and kindness God extends to me; in that He knows how to give me a hand to hold when I feel most alone. I listened to the whole album all the way through, and almost constantly once it was released, but it took me some time to discern one lyric in the song that made me cry that night: Turns out you never lacked a thing.
Wow.
My mind raced back to Leadership Conference in July. I’d sat under teaching for five days straight on the book of James, and the entire conference was based on three little words. Three words on a hoodie I designed, no less.
Lack no thing.
I had been running for so long. For six months I had been wandering around lost in my own mind, trying to discover who I was, and it turns out who I was had been there all along.
I am loved by God.
Not for what I can do, or achieve, or for how useful I am. Just for me.
It’s not that I’m enough in and of myself, but just my being with Him, and in His love… that is enough. I was made for loving Him, and to be loved by Him.
Taylor was right. I couldn’t find the love I wanted when I took off running when things got real. My soul craves nothing greater than to be held by someone who loves me.
And Someone does.
I just need to hold still for it.
“You wanna be held, you gotta hold still.”
On the last night of my time in Ashtonfield, I went for a run. My last one. The weather had been grungy for most of the week, but it cleared up that day, and golden hour was as glorious as I’d hoped it would be. I was listening to NEEDTOBREATHE again, one of their more worshipful songs. Bear Rineheart’s voice was belting out the chorus as my feet were belting the pavement: I am Yours, and You will always be mine, it seems like madness, I'm invited to the table by Your side. 'Cause I am Yours and You will always be mine; I'm a man whose one ambition is to dance with my Divine. 'Cause I am Yours, and You are, You are, You are, You are mine. My heart was so, so full. Full of gratitude for my time in Ashtonfield, in such a beautiful home and a beautiful place. For music, that spoke to the deep sadnesses and joys of my soul. For the ability to run. For the joy of sharing that space with friends and family. For good food. For even the tears, and the sorrow, and for what it taught me. For the knowledge of God, and His love for me. Those words, “I am Yours, and You are mine” seemed to echo and reverberate in my mind as I ran, breathing deeply of the Jasmine-scented air. The tears in my eyes were only the overflow of the thankfulness in my heart.
I backed up to read it again, and I glanced at the house. I had no idea who lived there, or what the nature of the message was, but it resonated. I stood there for a moment, gazing at the jagged chalk letters. As I turned to leave, I placed the sprig of Jasmine on the drive next to the text and continued walking.
Someone does, little one. Hold still, and you’ll know it.
His love is as close and present as the smell of Jasmine in the air.
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Hold Still, Taylor Leonhardt
Into the Mystery, NEEDTOBREATHE
