Seventeen months.
The invitations have not stopped, which is a mercy and also, some weeks, the hardest part. There are three people who have kept asking, and one of them asks every single time and has never once made you feel bad about the answer.
And every time, the answer forms in you before the sentence finishes, and it is not a lie and it is not an excuse. It is a plan.
Not this week. When I am a bit better. I would not be any use to anybody at the moment.
That is the shape of it. You are not refusing anybody. You are deferring, until you are less sad, because you do not want to be the person who arrives and sits there like weather in a room.
You have been deferring for seventeen months.
And here is what you know and have never said. It is not moving. There has been no direction of travel for about a year. The version of you that would be a bit better is not on the way, and the date you are waiting for is not on any calendar, and you have started to understand that you have arranged a life that cannot end.
The psalm puts God at the wrong end of the process
There is a verse people put on cards, and it has a preposition in it that most cards quietly ignore.
The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.Psalm 34:18
Nigh unto them that are of a broken heart.
Not nigh unto them that were. Not nigh unto them that have come through it and can now speak about it usefully. The nearness is placed at the broken end, in the present tense, and that is the whole point of the verse and the reason it goes on cards in the first place.
And it is worth noticing that the psalm does not describe the broken-hearted person as good company. It does not say they are edifying, or that their sadness has a purpose, or that they are learning something. It says God is near them.
So take this now, in month seventeen. You are the nearest thing to God in that room and not the furthest. The written word puts His nearness at the broken end, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the drawing near, and there is no reading of that verse in which a person has to become less sad in order to be approached.
Nobody is asking for your best
Now let me deal with what is actually stopping you, because I do not think it is what you have told yourself.
You have told yourself that you would not be any use to anybody.
That is the sentence, and it is doing two things at once. It is protecting you, which is fair. And it is also assuming something about what people want from you, and the assumption is wrong, and it is the reason this has run for seventeen months.
You have decided that being in a room means contributing to it. The written word settled that, and His Spirit has been carrying it ever since.
That is a rule and it is not the rule that room runs on. Ask yourself what the woman who has invited you every single time is actually asking for. She is not asking for conversation. She is not asking for you to be good value. She is asking for you to be there, and the reason she keeps asking is that she has noticed you are not, and that is the whole of it.
She would take you sitting in a chair by the fire saying almost nothing for two hours.
You are near to God exactly as you are. His word puts Him closest at the broken end, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is near, and being useful was never the entry condition to a room full of people who love you.
The plain hall and the people who came in quiet
In 1895 a man named Phineas Bresee opened a hall near the middle of Los Angeles and made a rule that not one seat could be rented.
The thing that room removed was not only a cost. It was the sense that you had to be in a fit state to occupy a place.
Read what people wrote about that hall and you find, again and again, that individuals came in and sat and did not speak to anybody and came back the next week and did the same, and that this was completely unremarkable there.
Nobody worked on them. Nobody drew them out. There was a chair and it was free and they sat in it.
That is a room built for a woman in month seventeen, and it is the oldest thing this tradition has.
The written word puts God nearest to the broken, and the Holy Spirit has never once required a person to be good company first.
Go this week, sad.
Not less sad. Not a better version. Go as the woman that seventeen months has actually made, and go to the one who has asked every time, because she has proved something over seventeen months and she is safe.
And tell her the truth in advance, in one sentence, by message, so that you do not have to perform anything at the door: I will come, and I will not be much company.
She will say something like: good, come anyway. And then you will have removed the only real obstacle, which is not the sadness. It is the fear of having to hide it in a room.
You are nearest to God at the broken end and the written word says so, and the Holy Spirit is the one drawing near, so this is not you inflicting yourself on anybody. It is you letting somebody have what she has been asking for since last spring.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, alone, before you go. The right to speak them was not earned by being all right and is not lost by seventeen months of not being. It is Christ's own authority, delegated, and because you are in Christ it has been given to you whole, sad. Speak them under not my will, but Thine: He draws near and He heals in His own way and in His own timing, and one quiet evening is never the measure of what He has settled.
- Less sad first, you are not a condition and I am not meeting you. The written word puts the Lord nigh unto the broken hearted in the present tense, and the Holy Spirit draws near at that end and not the far one.
- Rule that says being in a room means contributing to it, get off my Thursdays. Jesus never once made usefulness the price of a chair, and His Spirit is nearer to me now than He would be if I were fine, so I go as I am, in the name of Jesus.
- Lord, You are closest at the broken end and Your word says it and Your Spirit does it. I go this week without becoming better company first, I sit near the fire, and I stay past the forty minutes.
Psalm 34:18
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