The Shower She Said Yes To

There are balloons on the door. Someone has tied them properly, with ribbon, not the plastic clip.

She is on the second step with a wrapped gift and she has been here for about ninety seconds longer than a person stands on a step.

She loves her. That is not in question and it has never been in question. They have been friends since they were nineteen and this is the woman who sat on her bathroom floor in the November of the second year and did not say anything sensible, which was the correct thing, and who has never once asked her about it in a way that made her want to leave a room.

Eight years.

Eight years, and the appointments, and the year they stopped and started again, and the folder she keeps in the bottom of the wardrobe that she cannot throw out and cannot open.

She is going to go in. That was decided at home, twice, and again in the car.

But there is something happening in her chest on this step that she does not have a word for and would not use the obvious one, because the obvious one is a sin and she is not a woman who wants to be described that way and also she knows perfectly well that it is the right word.

Somebody is going to say the word blessed inside that house. Somebody always does at these. It will be said kindly and about the right person and she will smile.

If you have stood on a step holding a present, you know that ninety seconds. And you know the shape of the thing you are carrying: I am about to walk into a room and be genuinely glad and be doing something else at exactly the same time, and I do not know how to be a person who is both.

The word, and then the thing in your chest

Let me stand on the step and say the plain thing, because we have got about a minute.

The problem is not the shower. You are going in and you will be good at it and she will be glad you came. The problem is that you are about to do two things at once, and one of them has a name you find unbearable, and you have concluded that having it in you at all disqualifies you from the other.

So let me put the word straight, because it is going to be said in that house in about eleven minutes.

Blessed does not mean a woman gets a baby. It means the favor of God is resting on a person, His face is turned toward them. It is a statement about where He is looking. And it is not a quantity, which is the whole of it on a step like this one: what has been given in that house was not taken out of yours, and there is no queue in heaven with your name further down it.

Now the word for what is in your chest, and I am going to name it plainly and then tell you what the verse actually says about it, because you are expecting a rebuke and that is not what is coming.

For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.James 3:16

Read what that says. It does not say the person is evil. It says where envying is, there is confusion.

Confusion. The word means disorder, things not in their right places. It is a description of what envy does to a room and to a head, and it is a startlingly accurate description of what has been happening on this step: you love her, you are glad, you cannot feel glad, you have decided that means you do not love her, and none of those four things is in its right place.

You are standing in a confusion rather than a condemnation, and the verse describes a disorder rather than passing a sentence on you. James 3:16 names the effect rather than the person, and it is the Holy Spirit who is called the Spirit of truth, which is why the naming feels like relief rather than exposure.

What the next verse does

Now look at what James does immediately afterwards, because he does not leave the room in disorder.

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.

That is the very next verse, and it is a list of what comes into the space instead.

And look at two of them, because they are for you specifically. Without partiality, which means without dividing people into sides. And without hypocrisy, which literally means without play acting.

So the answer James gives is not: feel differently. It is not: manufacture gladness before you knock. It is a description of something that comes from above and lands in a room and puts things back in their right places, and the one thing it explicitly rules out is pretending.

Which means the thing you have been dreading, walking in and performing, is not what is being asked of you at all.

You are permitted to go in without play acting, and the verse that follows the one about envy rules out the pretending explicitly. James 3:17 puts without hypocrisy in the list of what comes from above, and it is the Holy Spirit who is the one who gives that wisdom, which means what you need in that room is issued rather than generated.

And here is the practical shape of it, and it is small. You do not have to feel glad. You have to be glad, which is a different verb, and gladness that is done rather than felt is not a lie, it is what love does on the days the feelings are elsewhere. You have done it before. You did it at the wedding in the fourth year and nobody knew, including her.

You have done this before out of love rather than out of feeling, and that was not hypocrisy either time. Scripture names the doing and rules out the play acting in the same passage, and it is His Spirit who bears the fruit afterwards, which has never once been in the order a person would choose on a step.

The eight years, and what I will not say

Now the eight years, because I am not going to walk past them.

I am not going to tell you your time is coming. I do not know. Nobody knows and everybody says it and you have heard it, by my reckoning, several hundred times, and every time it lands it takes something.

And I am not going to tell you God has a reason. He may. I have no access to it and neither does anybody who has told you they do, and a reason offered by somebody who does not have one is a cruelty in a kind voice.

And I am not going to tell you that the folder in the bottom of the wardrobe should be thrown out or opened. That is yours and there is no correct answer and anybody who gives you one is guessing.

Both halves. Eight years is not the withdrawal of God's favor and it is not His favor in a shape you have failed to appreciate.

You are favored and you have waited eight years, and neither of those is evidence about the other. Scripture never once makes a woman's blessedness contingent on what her body has done, and it is the Holy Spirit who bears witness with your spirit about your standing, which is a witness that has been true through every one of those years.