I Left Badly And I Cannot Walk In

Her feet stop about four steps from a door. Any door of that kind, anywhere, and she has tested it in three cities.

It is not a panic. She wants that clear because people hear this and reach for a word that is too big. She simply arrives at four steps out and finds that she is not going in, and there is a small readjustment in her, and then she is a woman standing on a path deciding to have a walk instead, and the walk is genuinely pleasant.

She has done this eleven or twelve times in six years.

She left the last one badly. That is her own word and she has never softened it and she is not going to now.

There had been something wrong for about two years, and she had raised it, correctly, in the right way, twice, and been managed both times, and the second time by somebody she had trusted for a decade. And then there was a Thursday evening meeting and she said several things that were true and one thing that was not fair, and she said the unfair one loudly, and she left before the end.

Nobody has ever contacted her. She would say that flatly, without self-pity, as a fact about how those things go.

She is fifty-two.

She reads every day. She listens to things while she cooks. She has three friends who love God and she talks about Him with all three of them, and one of them has asked her twice, gently, whether she has thought about somewhere new.

And there is a thing she has wanted for about three years now, and it cannot be arranged from outside a building, and every time she has got as far as the path she has stopped four steps out and gone for a walk.

Nobody is walking you through a door

Let me settle the thing you are braced for, because you will not hear a word of the rest until it is settled.

Nothing on this page walks you into a building.

Not this week, not gently, not at the end. There is no closing paragraph in which I suggest that the eleventh door might be the one, and I am not going to tell you that most churches are not like that, which is the sentence people reach for and which asks you to relitigate the whole thing in your head in order to receive comfort.

You are not going anywhere today. That is not a concession, it is the shape of the page.

Now let me say something about the four steps.

You have described it precisely and without drama and I want to take it as precisely as you gave it. Your feet stop. There is a readjustment. Then a pleasant walk.

That is a body doing something protective at a threshold, on the evidence of a Thursday evening in another city six years ago, and it is not cowardice and it is not unforgiveness and it is not a spiritual failure. It is a nervous system with a good memory, and it has been keeping you away from a specific kind of door with considerable efficiency.

Here is what God does about the thing underneath it.

He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.Psalm 147:3

Two verbs, and they are different, and most people read them as one.

Healeth is what happens to the injury. Bindeth up is what you do at the time, before healing, to hold a thing together while it is still open. A person who binds a wound is not pretending it is closed. They are staying with it.

And look at where that verse sits, because it is one of the strangest placements in the whole psalter. The two verses either side of it are about God counting the stars and calling them all by name. Somebody arranged that deliberately: the God who numbers the stars is described, in the very next breath, as somebody who does field dressing.

You are somebody God binds up while it is still open, and that is not encouragement for a woman on a path, it is what is written, and the Holy Spirit is the reason it is landing in the four steps rather than in your daily reading.

Now let me say the thing about the unfair sentence, because I suspect it is closer to the center of this than the two years of being managed.

You said several things that were true and one thing that was not fair, and you said the unfair one loudly, and you left before the end.

You have not been able to walk into a building since, and I do not think that is only because of what was done to you. I think part of it is that you know exactly what you said.

You are forgiven for that and it has never once been the reason a door was shut. Scripture says He heals the broken hearted and binds their wounds, and it does not distinguish between the wounds people gave you and the ones you gave, and the Spirit of God has kept you reading every day for six years, which is not what happens to somebody He has set aside.

I want to say the practical part, and it is small, and then I will stop.

You need one person, not a building.

The thing you have wanted for three years cannot be arranged from outside a building, you are right, but it can be arranged by one person who is inside one, and a conversation with one person does not require you to walk four steps toward anything.

Where you find that person is yours. I am not going to name a kind of place or a kind of leader for you from here, because you have been managed by somebody who was confident about your situation once already and I am not doing that to you again.

You are not shut out. The word puts the binding up in God's hands as present tense work, and the Spirit is the seal, and a body that stops four steps out is a body that has learned something, not a verdict that has been passed.

You are somebody God binds up while the thing is still open, which is different work from healing it. Scripture puts that sentence directly beside Him counting the stars and naming every one, and the Holy Spirit has kept you reading every day for six years.