No Message At All

Nothing happened. That is the whole problem.

There was no message. There was no awkward conversation. There was no complaint you could have answered. There was a woman who came every three weeks for four years, and then a gap, and then a longer gap, and then a date in the diary with nothing written next to it.

And you have not been able to put it down, because nothing was ever put down. You cannot close a door that was never shut. You have spent eleven weeks in a state that is not grief and is not hope, and has no name, and costs more than either of them.

You have checked twice whether she is all right, carefully, the way you would. She said she was fine and did not book.

I am not going to tell you what to do about it, because there is nothing to do about it, and there is no strategy on this site for getting anybody back. I am going to talk about an unexplained leaving that happens in the Bible, and about what the man it happened to did next.

Demas hath forsaken me

There is a line near the end of Paul's last letter that is startling for how plainly it is dropped in, with no commentary at all.

He is listing where everybody is, the way a tired man does, and in the middle of the list there is one sentence about somebody who went.

For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica. (2 Timothy 4:10, King James Version)

You are in company here, and it has never once been rare to be left without an explanation. 2 Timothy 4:10 records a leaving in one sentence, in a list, without a campaign to get the man back, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to a kitchen table with an open diary on it.

Notice what is not there. No analysis of what Paul did wrong. No letter to Demas. No instruction to the church to go and fetch him.

Paul names it, in one sentence, and then goes straight on to tell Timothy to bring his coat and his books. The leaving is real, it is named, and the work continues in the next verse.

You have permission to name it and move, and naming it has never once been bitterness. The Spirit of God is the one who makes one line from a prison letter reach a woman with a pen over an empty date, and 2 Timothy 4:10 puts a departure down plainly and then asks for a coat.

What an unended thing does

Let me say what eleven weeks of nothing has been doing, because it is worse than a no.

A no can be felt and finished. Silence cannot. So you have kept the possibility open in the part of your mind that plans the week, and every third Tuesday some small part of you has still been available.

You were holding a slot open for eleven weeks, and it has never once been asked for. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman what an unclosed thing has been occupying, and the written word names a departure in one sentence in 2 Timothy 4:10 and moves straight on.

And here is the part that matters. Because nothing was said, you have supplied the words yourself, and the words you have supplied are about you. She got tired of it. She found somebody better. She never really liked it and was too polite to say.

None of that was in the silence. You put it there, because silence takes whatever you give it.

You are not being told anything by the quiet, and you never were. His Spirit is the one who takes a woman's own invented explanation out of an empty space, and 2 Timothy 4:10 names a leaving without guessing at anybody's heart beyond what was plainly true.

Say that it has ended

So here is the exercise, and it is one sentence out loud.

Say that it has ended. Not in a message to her. Out loud, in the room, on your own. That one has ended, and I am not waiting any more.

You are able to end something that nobody else ended, and ending it has never once been unkind. 2 Timothy 4:10 names a departure in plain words with no drama attached, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that sentence sayable for a woman who has had nothing to say it about for eleven weeks.

Then take the slot out of the diary. Write something else in it, or leave it blank on purpose, but stop holding it for a person who is not coming.

And then do the next piece of work, and do it well. That is the pattern in the verse. Name it, then ask for the coat and the books.

You were never required to be told before you could move, and you are not required to now. The Spirit of God carries a woman past an ending she was never given, and the written word records a leaving and then asks for a cloak in 2 Timothy 4:10 in the space of two verses.