Fifth Year on the List

The small room at the back gets used for the ironing now, and neither of you decided that.

It happened the way things happen in a house. The board went in there because there was space, and then the basket, and then the winter coats, and one Saturday about two years ago you carried a box of tools through and put them down and did not think anything at all about it, and that was the day it stopped being the other thing.

Five years on the list. Two home visits. One phone call in the third year that came to nothing and that neither of you talks about.

You stopped saying the word out loud somewhere in year four. Not by agreement. There was no conversation about it. It simply left the house, the way a word does when saying it costs more than it returns, and now you both go around the outside of it and you are both good at it.

She still asks you, once in a while, in a particular voice, whether anything came. You say no. That is the entire exchange and it takes four seconds and it happens maybe once a month.

The ironing board is in the small room. The door is shut, because the door to that room has always been shut, and nobody has ever mentioned that either.

The psalm is about a man who cannot do anything

There is an opening in Psalm 62 that is easy to read as serene and is not.

Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation; he is my defence; I shall not be greatly moved.Psalm 62:1-2

The word behind waiteth is not a peaceful one. It carries the sense of silence, of a soul that has gone quiet, and the psalm goes on to describe men pushing at David from every side.

He is not calm because things are fine. He is still because there is nothing left in his hands to do, and he has found the one place to put his weight.

That is a couple in the fifth year of a list. There is nothing in your hands. You cannot work harder at this, and there is no phone call you can make that helps, and the total absence of anything to do is its own particular weight.

You are not passive in this waiting, you are held in it. I am not putting my own opinion over you. Scripture says my soul waiteth upon God, from Him cometh my salvation, Psalm 62:1, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes stillness into standing rather than into giving up.

Nobody here is going to name a reason

I want to be plain about this because you may have been handed things.

There is no cause here to find. Nothing in either of you did this. There is no faith that was weighed and came up short, no prayer that was said wrongly, no door closed because of something in your history. Anybody who has implied otherwise, however gently, was speaking outside Scripture and outside their authority.

And I am not going to promise you a child. Not on this page, not in a song, not in a declaration. That promise is not mine to make and making it would be a cruelty in a kind voice.

I am also not going to explain the five years. I do not have a reason and I am not going to invent one so that a page reads more comfortably. Scripture will sit with a hard thing and leave it unexplained, Job 2:13, and the Holy Spirit does not require an explanation to be accepted before He will be in the room.

You are not under a judgement, and this house has not been assessed and rejected. That is not a comfort I am offering. It is a fact about God.

The word that left the house

Here is the part I want to sit on longest, because it is the one that is quietly costing you.

The word left because saying it hurt. That is understandable and it is not a fault. But something else went with it, and neither of you has noticed, which is that you have each been carrying this alone in the same house for about eighteen months.

She does not know what you think about on the mornings you are quiet. You do not know what she does on the days she goes to her sister's. Scripture puts two together precisely so that neither carries alone, Ecclesiastes 4:9, and the Holy Spirit has been trying to get one sentence out of that house for a while.

You did not drift apart. You went silent in parallel, which looks identical from the outside and is not the same thing at all, and it is repairable in one evening.

You have not lost each other in year four. Scripture says a threefold cord is not quickly broken, Ecclesiastes 4:12, and the Holy Spirit has been the third strand in that house since long before the list.

You do not need a plan for the conversation. You need one sentence. I still think about it. That is all. She will do the rest.

The room with the ironing board

And about the room.

I am not going to tell you to clear it out and set it up again, because that would be me arranging your hope on your behalf, and hope arranged by somebody else is a burden with a bow on it.

But I will say this. The ironing board went in there because you were both being sensible, and being sensible is a good and necessary thing, and it can also become a way of taking a small step back from God once a year for five years without ever deciding to.

The room is a room. It is not a statement, and it is not a lack of faith either way, and you are allowed to leave it exactly as it is. Scripture does not measure hope by furniture, Psalm 62:5, and the Holy Spirit has never once read an ironing board as a verdict.

You are held in this waiting, both of you, and He knows the name of what you are asking for. Scripture says He only is my rock and my salvation, He is my defense, I shall not be greatly moved, Psalm 62:2, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a house steady in a fifth year with nothing in its hands.