It is in tissue paper, in the bottom drawer, under the good tablecloth nobody uses.
Your aunt made it. She made it before anybody had said anything, which is very much her, and she gave it to you in a bag with the handles knotted and did not make a moment of it, which is also very much her. Six years ago.
Cream. Slightly uneven at one shoulder. You have taken it out four times, that you can remember, and put it back four times.
Your friend is having hers in March.
The thought came on Tuesday and it came fully formed, which is how you know it has been forming for a while: you could give it to her. It would be a genuinely lovely thing to do, and she would cry, and your aunt would be pleased if she knew, and it would be out of the drawer.
And you have not been able to do it, and you have not been able to decide not to, and you have been walking past that chest of drawers all week like it is a person you are not speaking to.
What you cannot work out is what the giving would mean. Whether it would be generosity or whether it would be a small, private, permanent act of agreeing to something.
The psalm has a song in the dark and a question in the light
There is a verse in the middle of Psalm 42 that sits between two complaints.
Yet the LORD will command his lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.Psalm 42:8
The psalm around it is not resolved. Before this verse the writer's tears have been his food day and night. After it he asks God why He has forgotten him. The song in the night is not a conclusion, it is something happening in the middle of a thing that is still going on.
And notice whose song it is. His song. Not a song the psalmist has managed to produce. Something God is doing in the dark while the person in the dark is still asking questions.
You are being sung over in the middle of the not knowing. I am not putting my own opinion over you here. Scripture says in the night His song shall be with me, Psalm 42:8, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does that in a house where somebody keeps walking past a chest of drawers.
Neither choice is a statement about your faith
Let me take the weight out of the decision, because the weight is not really in the wool.
If you give it to her, that is not giving up. It is not a signature on anything. It is a lovely thing being used by somebody your aunt would like, and it commits you to precisely nothing.
If you keep it, that is not clinging and it is not unhealthy. It is a small object in a drawer that was given to you by someone who loves you.
Neither one is a message to God. He is not reading the drawer.
You are not being assessed on what you do with a bottom drawer. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and the Holy Spirit does not measure hope by household storage.
That is the thing I most want to take off you. The decision has become enormous because you have made it stand for something, and it does not stand for anything. It is a Tuesday and a drawer.
And nobody is naming a cause here
Because you may have been handed things, and I want to be plain.
There is no cause to find. Nothing you did. No faith weighed and found short, no reason anybody is entitled to guess at. Anyone who has implied otherwise, however gently, was speaking outside Scripture and outside their authority.
And I am not going to promise you a child, in this article or in a song or in a declaration. That promise is not mine to make and it would be a cruelty in a kind voice.
You are not under a judgement, and six years is not a verdict. Scripture is willing to sit inside an unresolved longing for a whole psalm and never explain it, Psalm 42:9, and the Holy Spirit does not require a resolution before He is willing to be near somebody.
What six years has quietly done
Here is the part that is worth looking at properly.
Six years has turned an object into a test. The thing in the tissue paper is no longer a thing your aunt knitted. It has become the place where you check on yourself, and every time you open that drawer you take a reading.
That is exhausting, and it is nobody's fault, and it happens to everybody who waits a long time. Objects collect meaning the way a window collects dust.
You are allowed to take the meaning back off it. You have not been asked to carry a test in a chest of drawers. Scripture says cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee, Psalm 55:22, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman put down a weight she assembled herself without a word of blame attached to it.
You have been trying to decide what the giving would mean. That is why you cannot decide: you are not choosing between two actions, you are trying to interpret a symbol, and the symbol was never real.
Scripture never assigned it one, Psalm 42:8, and the Holy Spirit has not been reading it. The thing to put down is not the wanting and it is not the drawer. Put down the meaning.
Then choose, or do not choose this week. Give it to her in March, or do not. Ask your aunt what she thinks, which might be the simplest and best thing in this whole article.
You are held in this waiting, and He knows the name of what you are asking for. Scripture says in the night His song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life, Psalm 42:8, and the Holy Spirit has been singing over that chest of drawers for six years while you walked past it.
Whatever is in that drawer next March, you will still be held, and the drawer will still just be a drawer.
Declare this over yourself
Speak these standing in Christ, under the will of God, with no date placed on Him. Scripture gives the standing and the Holy Spirit carries the words, and the outcome is His, and He may answer in His own way.
- Bottom drawer with a small knitted thing in it, you are not a decision about whether I have given up. Scripture says His song is with me in the night, and He has been singing in this house on every night I walked past you.
- Meaning I hung on that drawer without noticing, so that opening it became a way of taking a reading on myself, get out in the name of Jesus. Scripture says cast thy burden upon the Lord and He shall sustain thee, Psalm 55:22, and the Holy Spirit is not reading my hope off a chest of drawers.
- Lord, You are the God of my life whose song is in the night, and You never once needed this decided. I am asking my aunt what she thinks, and I am leaving March with You.
Psalm 42:8
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