When everything shifts, you can feel untethered.
I’ve known that feeling since childhood. Asthma gave me recurring nightmares about breathing. In one, I’m outside a spacecraft on a tether, and the tether breaks. I float off into space.
Years later, that feeling returned in real life.
My husband, Reggie, was a gifted encourager. And he was my champion. When he died, I lost the most tangible part of my support system. It’s no wonder I felt untethered.
Maybe you know that feeling too. Someone or something that helped steady your world is gone, or is there, but in a different way. The life around you feels unfamiliar. Even time with God may not feel the same.
If you’re wondering how to stay connected to God when everything feels unstable, start with the very first page of the Bible.
Why You Feel Untethered
In God’s Creative Process, this place has a name: Room 1, Remain Connected. It’s the season when you stay close to God as you move from the life that ended to the one He is forming.
That in-between space can be disorienting. Many of us get stuck here. The people, routines, roles, or relationships that once helped steady you may be gone or changing.So much of your old life changing can impact how you feel about God. It can raise questions that make you feel disconnected.
When the routines and people that held us together fall away, we assume our connection to God fell away with them. Distance from the old life starts to feel like distance from Him.
As I wrote in When Your World Ends, “You feel untethered because you’re no longer tied to the part of your life that just ended, but feeling disconnected from your old life doesn’t mean you have to feel disconnected from God—at least, not for long.”
You feel untethered because something ended—when God is right here with you, in the in-between.
You feel “untethered” because something ended—when “God is right here with you,” in the in-between.
Why You May Not Feel Like Yourself After Loss
Loss comes in many forms. Divorce, retirement, caregiving, an empty nest, a lost job, a move, an illness, a change in your ministry or leadership, or anything else that reshapes a role can all alter the life that once helped you recognize yourself.
Ordinary life holds your identity in place more than you might realize. Some people know you a certain way. Some rooms give your role clarity. Familiar routines remind you that you’re capable, and your responsibilities show who needs you.
When several of those change at once, the woman in the mirror may still look familiar, but the life around her no longer reflects the same person.
Sometimes your life changes before your sense of self catches up.
That may be why you’re asking, “Who am I now?”
What Genesis 1:2 Shows About God’s Presence
The first page of the Bible gives us a picture for seasons like this.
“The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters”
~Genesis 1:2
Before God spoke a single word in verse 3, His Spirit was already there, hovering over the chaos, the emptiness, and the darkness. God’s first act in the creation story was hovering.
In When Your World Ends, I explore the Hebrew words merakhephet and al, which carry the picture of moving or circulating above. God is present over the disorder, calmly moving above what hasn’t taken shape yet.
That revelation changed how I understood my own untethered season. I wrote that “hovering or floating untethered is by design. It’s the first step in God’s creative process.”
I began to see my place in the in-between differently. I was in the Spirit’s grip. God had me.
When your life feels suspended between what was and what will be, He has you, too.
How to Stay Connected to God in Room 1
In When Your World Ends, I describe four ways the Spirit hovers. Each one shows you a way to stay close.
Suspended in place. Think of a child lifted into a parent’s arms. You can stop striving for movement and let God hold you where you are.
Caught between two states. It can feel like living among moving boxes, with the old life packed and the new one not yet unpacked. You can rise above the confusion with Him instead of forcing an answer.
Lingering close at hand. Stay near and wait for Him, the way you’d match a friend’s pace on a walk. Do not run ahead of God or lag behind Him.
Remaining at or near a certain level. A pilot light stays lit even on a low flame. Keep a steady connection at whatever level you can manage right now.
All four lead to the same first step. In John 15, the Greek word for “abide” is meinate, meaning to “remain in a place.” Remaining connected is how we “bear much fruit.”
That’s how to stay connected to God when everything feels unstable: stay close, at whatever level you can manage right now.
As I wrote,
If you can’t see “reconnext” then remain connected, because God is never disconnected.
A Practice for This Week
Keep it small. Choose one thing you already do every day: your first cup of coffee, starting the car, or turning off the lamp at night.
Let that moment become your tether. Each time, pause and pray one line: “Lord, I’m here. Hold me.”
That’s the whole practice. Remaining connected may look like returning to the same small place, again and again.
A short prayer still counts. God “considers quality (the position of my heart) more important than quantity (frequency or amount of time spent with him).”
You may not feel anything right away. Stay close anyway.
Continue the Conversation
If you’re reading this with a friend or small group…
Recognition: Where do you feel untethered right now?
Release: Which former role, rhythm, or expectation are you using to decide whether you are “still yourself”?
Reframe: What would staying close to God look like this week if you stopped requiring it to look the way it used to?
A Blessing for the Untethered
May you know you’re held, even when you feel like you’re floating.
May the Spirit who hovered over the deep stay close to you in the in-between.
And may you find your “way back to Him” , one small moment at a time.
Find Your Room
If you feel untethered, you don’t have to guess where you are in the rebuilding process.
God’s Creative Process has seven Rooms, each with a different invitation and next faithful step.
Take the 3-minute God’s Creative Process quiz to discover your Room and get language for where you are right now, so your next faithful step fits where you are.
