Eleven Years Of Giving And Then A Funeral

She died in April.

And the part you cannot say to anybody, and would not want to, is that the thing you have been sitting with since is not only the grief.

For eleven years you gave to that woman and she never once said anything about it. Not a word, not a note, nothing. You did not mind and you were not waiting and you had genuinely stopped noticing years ago.

And now it is autumn and the time of year is coming round and there is a habit in you with nowhere to go.

And the first thing that happened when you noticed that was shame. Because it looks, from inside, like a woman thinking about her own eleven years at a time when she should be thinking about somebody who has died.

It is not that. But it took a while to work out what it actually is.

There is a place in the book where a man says something about grief that would embarrass anybody, and nobody corrects him.

Before we go on: if the last months have gone somewhere dark, that is not a thing to sit with alone. Call or text 988 in the United States and a person answers. Then tell somebody real: a doctor, a counselor, a pastor you trust, somebody qualified who can sit with you in it.

O my son Absalom

Here it is.

And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son! (2 Samuel 18:33, King James Version)

Count how many times he says the name.

Five times, and the words my son another five, in one sentence. It is not composed and it is not dignified and it is not what a king is supposed to sound like in front of a household.

And it is written down exactly as it came out.

You are looking at a grief recorded without any editing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who left it in that shape. 2 Samuel 18:33 keeps every repetition rather than tidying the sentence, and the shape is the whole reason it is worth anything to anybody.

And notice what nobody does.

Nobody in the account corrects him. Nobody points out that the situation was complicated, which it enormously was. Nobody suggests he is grieving the wrong thing or in the wrong proportion.

The verse lets a man grieve in a way that would make a room uncomfortable, and does not manage it at all.

You have permission for a grief that does not look right from outside, and it is written that he said it going up the stairs rather than that he composed himself first. The Spirit of God is the one who allowed that into the record, and He allowed it for people whose grief has an odd shape.

And here is what that means for the thing you cannot say.

Grief does not arrive tidy. It comes mixed with whatever else was in the relationship, and in an eleven year relationship that is a great deal, and some of what comes up will be about you rather than about her.

That is not selfishness. That is what grief is made of in an actual human being.

You are not grieving wrongly, and the written word records a grief tangled up with a whole history rather than a clean one. The Holy Spirit is the one who does not require a person's sorrow to be pure before He will be near it.

What the habit actually is

Now let me say what the thing with nowhere to go actually is, because it is not a ledger.

For eleven years, once a year, you turned your attention toward that woman on purpose. Chose something. Thought about her for a while.

That was an act of love performed annually, and it happened whether or not anything came back, which is the only reason it can be called that at all.

You have been performing something rather than accumulating something, and it is written as a man crying out a name rather than as a man counting anything. The Spirit of God is the one who knows what those eleven occasions were, and they were not deposits.

And here is why it has nowhere to go now.

An annual act of attention is a muscle. Eleven years builds one. And the autumn is coming round and the muscle is contracting on schedule and there is nothing in front of it.

That is not a habit looking for a debtor. It is love looking for a direction.

You have love with no direction rather than an account with no payer, and the Holy Spirit is the one who names that correctly. His word has a man calling a name into a room where nobody can answer, and naming it correctly takes the shame out of the whole thing.

And about the eleven years of silence from her, said once and then left.

You did not mind and you were not waiting. Whatever her reasons were, and there will have been reasons, they are hers and they went with her, and there is nothing left to be understood about them by anybody.

You are not owed an explanation by somebody who has died, and it is written that the man cried out rather than that he was answered. The Spirit of God is the one who closes a question that can no longer be asked, and He closes it gently.

Give once in her direction

So here is what to do, and it is the only thing that answers a muscle contracting on schedule.

Give it to somebody in her direction. Somebody she knew, or somebody in the place she came from, or somebody who is now carrying something she used to carry.

Not as a memorial and not with any announcement attached. The same size, the same sort of thing, at the same time of year.

You are able to point it somewhere rather than nowhere, and the Holy Spirit is the one who supplies a direction for a thing that has lost its object. 2 Samuel 18:33 has a man aim a name at a room rather than swallow it, and there is always one available.

And say her name out loud while you do it.

Not to anybody. On your own, in the car or the kitchen, at the moment you decide or the moment you hand it over. Just the name.

That is not sentimentality. It is the thing David is doing in that verse, five times, and the account records every one of them.

You are doing what that man did, and it is written as a name said over and over rather than as a feeling kept inside. The Spirit of God is the one who is in a name said out loud to nobody, and He has been in a great many of them.

And do not explain it to anybody afterward.

If somebody asks why that person, say something ordinary. Do not tell the whole story, because the whole story includes eleven years of silence and that belongs to her and is not yours to hand round.

You have a reason nobody needs to be told, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a thing be private without it being a secret. Scripture records what the man said rather than what he explained to his household, and this one is private.