There is a chair nobody sits in and a name nobody says, and everybody at that table has agreed to it without a word ever being spoken about it.
Eleven years. It was a real thing and it was serious and there were two sides to it, and it has hardened the way these things do, into something so old that the original shape of it is hard to make out.
He prayed about it properly for the first four years. Then less. Then it moved into the general category, the way things do, the part of praying where you say the names of everybody you love and move on.
And two Christmases ago, washing up, with the house full, he heard himself think: that is not going to happen in my lifetime.
It did not upset him. That is the part he keeps turning over. It arrived like a piece of housekeeping, a thing being filed correctly at last, and there was a small and shameful relief in it, and he has never told a single member of his family that he has closed that file.
If you have quietly filed a relationship as finished, come and sit down at this table. Nothing is going to be demanded of you here.
Closing a file is not the same as wanting it closed
Let us be exact about what happened, because the shame attached to it is doing more damage than the closing did.
You did not decide against that person. You made a forecast, after eleven years of evidence, about what is likely, and the forecast is honestly the same one anybody with the same information would make. That is a reasonable act, and neither the written word nor the Holy Spirit ever attached shame to a reasonable act.
And the relief is not wickedness either. Relief is what a body does when it puts down a weight it has been carrying up a hill for a decade.
You are not being blamed for a conclusion you reached honestly. Nothing about that forecast has ever bound God, and nothing you have concluded sets a limit on Him. I am not saying it to spare you. The written word says is any thing too hard for the LORD (Genesis 18:14), which is a question with a settled answer and it was asked to somebody who had laughed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that hold at a sink with the house full.
The question He asked the prophet
Here is what steadied me, and it is not an instruction to start hoping again.
A man is set down in a valley full of bones. Not a fresh disaster. Very dry ones, which is the text's own detail, meaning this has been over for a long time. And God asks him a question.
And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord GOD, thou knowest.Ezekiel 37:3
Look at the answer he gives. He does not say yes. A man standing in that valley, looking at what he is looking at, cannot honestly say yes and he does not pretend to. He says, Lord God, Thou knowest.
That is an answer given by somebody who has run out of his own optimism and refuses to lie about it, and it is the answer Scripture records without correcting.
You are allowed that exact sentence, and the Word keeps it as a faithful answer rather than a failure of nerve. That is written down as the prophet said it, and the Holy Spirit is what drives it home in a man at a sink at Christmas.
Nothing is being asked of the other person
Something has to be said very plainly, and it is a boundary this page will not cross.
Nothing here is going to be declared over the other person in that story. Not their heart, not their will, not what they do next. Authority is never aimed at another human being's choosing, however lovingly meant, and any page that has you commanding a relative to soften has handed you a weapon and called it prayer.
You have things to speak to that are genuinely yours: the despair, the shame, the file, the sentence in your own head. Scripture says casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you (1 Peter 5:7), where the care goes over and the person stays free, and it is the Holy Spirit who has been carrying eleven years of this without once asking you to control anybody.
And if this has cost more than anybody at that table knows, if sleep has gone, if the evenings have started to frighten, please talk to somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, a crisis line, and the emergency services if there is danger to anybody tonight. That is not a detour around God. It is one of the ways He keeps people.
So this is where it turns, and it is not a prediction about your family.
God is not offended by what you have stopped expecting. He turns things that get written off, and your unbelief is not stronger than His kindness. The written word says if we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself (2 Timothy 2:13), which rests the whole arrangement on His constancy rather than on anybody's forecast, and the Holy Spirit is the One who proves it true about your actual kitchen rather than about families in general.
I cannot tell you what happens with that relationship, or whether anything does. Nobody honest can, and the other person is free and stays free. What I can tell you is that a prophet in a valley of very dry bones answered a direct question with Lord God, Thou knowest, and that Scripture kept it exactly as he said it.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in your own voice. The standing under these words is yours in Christ, and it was never issued on the strength of how long you kept hoping. Scripture holds it up, and the Holy Spirit is what makes it living rather than merely resigned, and what God does about that relationship, and when, is His, whatever He does with it, and no line here pretends to know.
- File I closed on that relationship, you are a conclusion I reached alone and you are not the last word on what God does. Ezekiel 37 has a man in a valley of very dry bones answering, Lord God, Thou knowest, and the Holy Spirit kept that as a faithful answer rather than a failure. In the name of Jesus I stop treating you as final.
- Shame that came with the relief, you are not what God says about me, and you are not standing at this sink on Sunday. First Peter 5 says cast all your care upon Him, for He cares for you, where the care goes over and the person stays free, and His Spirit has carried eleven years of this without once asking me to control anybody. I am saying the honest sentence tonight and blessing them without commanding them.
- Father, is any thing too hard for You, and Genesis 18 asked that of somebody who had already laughed. I thank You that Your Spirit has never once been bound by a forecast I made at a sink. Here is the thing I no longer expect, out loud, and I am leaving the other person entirely in Your hands.
Ezekiel 37:3
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