Everywhere I turn, I keep hearing, “hold on.” Just keep holding on. I know the truth of it: hold on to your confession of Christ; hold on to the teaching once passed down from the apostles; hold on to your faith; hold on to Jesus. Just hold on.

Yet, these days I am tired. I now have a baseline fatigue, a constant companion from the cancer medications I’m taking and surgeries I’ve had. Two weeks ago, I had an infusion to stave off losing more bone density. Within 24 hours, another layer of fatigue hit me, a “profound fatigue,” as my nurse at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance called it, a mind-numbing fatigue that landed me in the Emergency room earlier this week.

To fend off fatigue, I exercise. I walk laps around our house every hour with five flights of stairs. I walk with Nancy at Lion’s Park or in and around the college campus. I exercise at Cardiac Rehab at St. Michael’s Hospital. While the exercise helps, it also adds to my fatigue. I am tired.

I do not find much comfort in the admonition to “hold on.” Instead, I find myself in a season of life like a dormant winter tree, leaves stripped away by the wind, branches left bare in cold air. Loss hangs heavy like a blanket of winter snow. Everything is draped in loss.

Why is it that we so often focus on what we must do—on what we must do to hang on to faith and life and hope? Yet, what brings comfort like a warm fire on a cold winter night, is the God of all comfort who holds me in His hand, sheltering me in the cup of his hand, ever holding me tightly in His grip. Maybe when we so quickly jump to what we must do, we miss what God has already done, what He is yet doing now, and what He has promised to do in our future. Maybe when we so quickly jump to what we must do, we make ourselves large—and God small.

What brings me comfort, strengthening my faith, renewing the eternal hope that I have in Jesus, lifting me on eagle’s wings to soar above all my troubles, is the truth that no one can snatch me from out of the wounded hands of Jesus, nor out of the hand of the Father, of whom no one is greater. I rest in God’s faithfulness—not my own. I rest in the illimitable love of God, the power of His grace, the wind beneath my wings. He is my everything!

I am profoundly tired. Yet, what if that’s the very place to which God has led me. In my weakness, the power of His grace is perfected! Paul’s words come to mind, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels to show that the transcendent power belongs to God, and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.” Maybe when we are at our weakest, the tender and loving presence of Jesus is most clearly seen in our life. Maybe when we are at our weakest, when holding on seems beyond our grasp and strength, we find ourselves ever sheltered in the hollow of His hand—resting in the truth that He never lets go of us.