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One of my best memories was walking the jetty during our trip to Plymouth, MA this summer. To the right is a picture of my hubby standing on the jetty to give you an idea of what it is like. (Note: we are not responsible for the graffiti. 🙂 You see, I am a klutz. I am not graceful in any sense of the word. So, I was a bit apprehensive about walking it at first. But, Andy told me it would be fine. When it came time to walk out, my apprehension turned to down right fear. The jetty didn’t seem very wide. And there was something about seeing the water move on both sides that played with my mind and made me feel like everything was moving. I didn’t trust that the rocks that I had to step on were sturdy enough. Luckily, there was a metal rope railing along one side as you can see in the picture, but I quickly learned that the railing didn’t go all the way out. I stood frozen and debating whether to attempt the walk or not. Andy asked if I wanted to go back. But, I said no — I wanted to do it. Eventually, I had to let go of the rail and take one step after another trusting that the rocks were not going to slide out from underneath of me.
Trust is something that God has been working on in me a lot lately. I have a hard time trusting God. It is kinda like walking the jetty – I am usually scared that everything will crumble and fall out beneath my every step. There is a song that we sang in church last week called “Nothing I Hold On To”. (You can listen to it here: Nothing I Hold On To – Will Reagan and United Pursuit) One of the verses says: “I will climb this mountain with my hands wide open.” When we were singing that song, I thought again about my trip across the jetty. If I wanted to make it across, I had to be willing to let go of the rail and trust my feet and the rocks beneath me. Learning to trust God is much the same way. Holding our hands open is usually seen as a symbol of sacrifice, but I also think it is a symbol of trust. That line, “I will climb this mountain with my hands wide open”, to me it means being willing to let go of the thing that make me feel safe and gives me security and instead reaching out and holding on to God and what he has promised. He will guide and direct me. He will never leave me. He will give me strength. He will help me. He will hold me up. He will never let me down.
Each step across the jetty was a little bit easier. With each step, I realized that the rocks were firmly in place and I wasn’t going to fall. The same is true with God. Once we let go and reach out to Him, we learn that everything that He has promised it true. And as a result, each step becomes a little bit easier to take.
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Here we are after having made it to the end of the jetty. As you can probably tell from the smile on my face, I was pretty proud of myself. I felt victorious! Then I remembered we had to walk all the way back…
The walk back was actually a lot better than the walk out. I had learned to trust the rocks and my feet, so I was actually able to soak in the beauty of the view and noticed lots of cool things that I was too anxious to notice on the way out. When we learn to trust God, we will notice things around us that we didn’t see before because our eyes where shut so tight with fear before. We will also be able to stop and help others along the way too because our hands are no longer clenched white knuckled for security.