She Walked Out Halfway And Never Went Back

She had said she would do it for a year and she did seven months.

She was not the only one carrying it, but she was the one people came to, which happens without anybody deciding it, and by about month five she was the one three separate people phoned when something went wrong.

Then there was a fortnight in February. Nothing enormous. Two small things at home and one bad conversation, and she got to a Wednesday and could not.

She wrote a message. It was honest and it was short and she read it once and sent it, and then she turned her phone face down on the table and went and stood in the garden in the cold without a coat.

People were kind. Two of them were extremely kind, in a way that she has replayed and that somehow makes it worse, because being forgiven for something you have not forgiven yourself for does not resolve anything, it just moves the whole matter into a room where nobody else will discuss it.

Four years.

She has done a great many good things since. She is dependable in a hundred ordinary ways and everybody who knows her would call her reliable.

But she does not commit to lengths of time any more. She will help. She will do a thing this week, and a thing next month, and she is genuinely useful. She will not say yes to anything with a duration attached to it, and she has an excellent reason ready for that, and the reason is true and it is not the reason.

The reason is a sentence she formed in February of that year, standing in a cold garden with no coat on, and it is: now I know I am somebody who leaves.

She has never examined that sentence. It arrived at a moment of maximum honesty and she has treated it ever since as the most reliable thing she knows about herself, which is exactly what a sentence formed in that condition is not.

And you have one too. Something you did not finish, and a sentence you formed about yourself in the days afterward, and you have been running your life off it since.

He said it before, not after

There is a moment in Luke that is easy to read past because of what comes after it, and it is one of the kindest things in the Gospels.

Jesus turns to Peter before the denial. Before it. He tells him what is about to happen, in detail, and he tells him he has prayed for him, and then he says this.

But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.Luke 22:32

When you have turned again.

Not if. The turning back is spoken of as a settled matter before the failure has even happened, and the instruction that follows it assumes a Peter who is not only restored but back at work, and specifically back at work strengthening other people.

You were prayed for before the day you left, and your turning back was spoken about as settled before you formed one sentence about yourself in a cold garden. It is written, when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers (Luke 22:32), and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a sentence spoken over a fisherman before his worst night and lays it under a woman four years into a private verdict.

Now the sentence itself, because it is the thing running your calendar.

Now I know I am somebody who leaves.

Consider where it was formed. February, after a fortnight with two hard things at home and one bad conversation, in the cold, immediately after doing something that cost her enormously. That is a person at the absolute bottom of their reserves making a permanent statement about their own nature.

We would not accept a conclusion from anybody in that condition about anything else. If she had decided in that garden that she was a bad mother, or that nobody liked her, you would recognize instantly that the moment was not a reliable narrator.

You have been treating a sentence composed at your lowest as your most reliable self knowledge, and it is the least reliable thing you own. Scripture says the Lord knows our frame, He remembers that we are dust (Psalm 103:14), and it is the Holy Spirit who remembers what February was actually like, which is more than you have allowed yourself to remember.

And the seven months deserve to be said out loud, because they have vanished from the account entirely.

Seven months of carrying it. Seven months of being the person three people phoned. Nobody counts those any more, including you, and the whole of that year has been compressed into one Wednesday.

You carried it for seven months and that is not deleted by the way it ended. It is written that God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love you have shown (Hebrews 6:10), and it is His Spirit who holds the full record, which includes every one of those phone calls and not just the message you sent with your phone face down.

And the being forgiven, which somehow made it worse.

That is not ingratitude in you. It is that forgiveness from other people closed the conversation without settling it, and you were left holding the whole thing alone in a room with no door.

You are allowed to bring this to God even though everybody else has already let it go, and He is not going to tell you it does not matter. Scripture says if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9), and it is the Holy Spirit who does the cleansing, which is a different and deeper operation than being told it was fine.