The Number She Never Says Out Loud

She knows the number to the month.

That is the first thing worth saying, because people assume that a person who has been hoping a long time has lost track, and it is almost always the opposite. She could tell you the season it started. She could tell you what she was wearing.

Nine years and four months.

She has never said that out loud. Not once, to anybody, including the two people who know most of it.

There are reasons and she has examined all of them. Saying it makes it a number, and a number can be compared to other people's numbers, and hers would win in a way she does not want to win. Saying it invites a response, and she has heard most of the responses, and there is one in particular she does not think she could survive again, which is the kind one about how God's timing is perfect said by somebody at month four of their own thing.

But underneath the reasons there is a simpler one.

She is frightened that if she says nine years and four months out loud, she will hear how long it is.

She keeps it vague on purpose. A while. A good while now. Ages, really. She has a whole vocabulary for it and it is all designed to stop the number arriving in the room.

If you have a number you never say, come and sit down and have some tea. Nobody here is going to tell you to keep believing.

Scripture says the heart goes sick, and it says it first

There is a proverb that gets quoted in halves, and the half that gets skipped is the one written for you.

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.Proverbs 13:12

Stop there. Do not go on yet. The verse does go on, and we will get to it, but the second half has been used for so long as a way of hurrying people past the first half that it has become a kind of lid.

Look at what the first half actually does. It does not say hope deferred is a test. It does not say hope deferred builds character. It does not say the heart ought not to go sick or that a stronger person's would not.

It says the heart goes sick. Flat statement. Cause and effect, put into Scripture by God, with no correction attached and no encouragement bolted on the end of that clause.

You are not sinning by being heart sick, and the word itself says so before it says anything else. Proverbs 13:12 states the sickness as a fact rather than a fault, and it is the Holy Spirit who preserved that sentence in that order, which means the thing you have been apologizing for is the thing God wrote down first.

Nobody here is going to ask anything of your hoping

Now the thing that has been braced against for nine years, because it is why the number stays in your mouth.

You are expecting to be told to keep believing, and no such instruction is coming. Proverbs 13:12 says hope deferred maketh the heart sick and then stops, with no correction and no remedy fastened to that clause, and it is the Holy Spirit who kept it in that exact order, which means nobody on this page is going to ask you to hold on harder than you already have for nine years.

None of that is coming. Not in this article and not from the passage.

The proverb does not instruct the sick heart to do anything at all. There is no imperative in it. It is a description, and descriptions are what you give somebody when the useful thing is to be seen rather than to be advised.

You have been seen rather than assessed, and the seeing came before any word of advice. Psalm 56:8 says He puts your tears into His bottle and asks are they not in His book, and it is His Spirit who makes that a thing a person can lean on, which means the years you have never counted out loud have been counted somewhere with great care.

And I will say the plain thing about the second half of the proverb, because it exists and I am not going to pretend it does not.

The verse does go on to speak about a desire that comes, and a tree of life. That is true and it is coming from the same God. But it is not for today, and rushing you into it would be doing to you exactly what has been done to you for nine years, and I would rather leave it standing there unspent than use it as a way of getting you out of the room.

You are being held in the first half for as long as the first half is where you are. Isaiah 42:3 says a bruised reed He will not break and smoking flax He will not quench, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries a word at the temperature a person can actually take, which means nobody is going to hurry you.

God is the one holding you here, and He has been holding you for nine years and four months, including every month you kept the number in your mouth.