Guard My Life and Rescue Me
This morning I opened my Bible and landed in Psalm 25. I’ve read it before, but sometimes Scripture sits differently depending on the season you’re in. Today it was verse 20–21 (NIV) that stopped me:
“Guard my life and rescue me; do not let me be put to shame, for I take refuge in You. May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope, Lord, is in You.”
I read those words out loud more than once. It felt less like ancient poetry and more like something my own heart was trying to say but hadn’t found the words for yet.
Being a single mom has a way of stripping the gloss off life. You don’t get the illusion of control for very long, because it all feels fragile and unfinished most of the time. The car breaks down, and it’s on you. Your child gets sick in the middle of the night, and it’s on you. Bills pile up, appointments are missed, exhaustion seeps into every corner, and still — it’s on you. Sometimes I feel like I’m standing guard over a house I built with my bare hands, praying it doesn’t collapse while I’m asleep.
That’s why David’s words feel like they could have been written for us — the mothers holding the line, the people trying to live upright in a world that rewards shortcuts, the ones who feel the ache of shame pressing in because life didn’t turn out the way it “should have.” I know that feeling too well. Shame that I couldn’t keep the family together. Shame that I’m still figuring things out financially. Shame that my son will grow up with questions I can’t fully answer. It sneaks in like a whisper: you’re not enough, you’ll never be enough.
But Psalm 25 pushes back against that. It reminds me that protection doesn’t come from perfection. It’s not about me holding everything together so tightly that nothing can break through. It’s about God Himself being the guard. It’s about handing Him my life and admitting I can’t keep us safe on my own. And instead of shame, I find refuge. Instead of being crushed under the weight of everything I can’t do, I find that He already is doing what I can’t.
I think about the nights I tuck my son into bed. He lies there without fear, completely unbothered by all the things that keep me awake. He doesn’t know the details of our bank account or the fragile what-ifs in my mind. He trusts me to watch over him. That’s the picture this Psalm paints for me — except in this case, I’m the one curled up small, and God is the one keeping watch.
It reminds me of Mary, too. She knew what it meant to entrust her child into God’s hands. She knew what it meant to pray protection over a Son who carried both glory and risk in His very being. And she also knew the ache of realizing she couldn’t shield Him from everything. But she still entrusted. She still prayed. She still leaned into the God who had chosen her for this impossible, holy task.
That’s where I land tonight. Not with answers, not with a neat bow tied over my life, but with this simple prayer that feels enough for today: guard my life, Lord. Guard his life. Rescue us when we don’t even know what danger we’re in. Cover us in Your protection, because my hope isn’t in my own strength or my own story anymore — it’s in You.
Maybe that’s the heart of Psalm 25. Not a psalm of the put-together, but of the desperate. Not a psalm of victory laps, but of whispered prayers in the middle of a hard road. It’s not glamorous, but it is honest. And sometimes that’s all faith really is — being honest enough to hand over what we can’t carry, and hopeful enough to believe God really will.
