The Story She Tells Too Well

She has told it enough times that it has developed a shape.

That is not a criticism of her. It happens to any account that gets told often, and she has been asked about this for years by people who love her and were right to ask.

But somewhere in the telling it acquired a beginning, a middle, a couple of good lines that always land, and a moment where the person listening always says oh, and she has learned to leave a small gap for that.

And it acquired somebody.

Not a villain exactly. Nobody in this story did anything monstrous and she would say so if you pressed her. But there is a person in the shape now, and the shape holds together better with them in it, and every time she tells it that person's part gets very slightly firmer.

She noticed it in a car park after telling it to somebody new.

She was walking back and she thought: I used to be fond of them.

Not I used to be wrong about them. Not they have changed. Just that there was a time when that name arrived in her chest warmly, and it does not any more, and the change did not happen in any encounter with the actual person. It happened in a story she has told about forty times.

She has told nobody about that, obviously, because there is not a way to raise it that does not sound worse than it is.

If your account of your own waiting has developed a shape, come and sit down at this table. Nobody is going to make you retract anything.

The word for it is a root, and the warning is about direction

There is a phrase in Hebrews that is usually quoted at people, and it is worth reading as the piece of horticulture it actually is.

Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled.Hebrews 12:15

The image is a root, which is a specific choice and it tells you three things immediately.

A root is underground, so it is not visible when it starts. A root grows without being tended, so nobody has to decide anything for it to get bigger. And a root is not the same as the plant: what you see above ground later is not the thing that started it.

That is a description rather than an accusation, and the instruction attached is looking diligently, which is watchfulness rather than repentance.

You are being shown a root rather than sentenced for a plant, and the difference is the whole tone of the verse. Hebrews 12:15 puts the instruction as looking rather than confessing, and it is the Holy Spirit who does the showing at a stage when a thing is still small enough to be handled, which means the thought you had in that car park was help arriving early.

Nobody is asking you to retract the story

Now the thing I want to protect, because a woman in your position is one sentence away from a cure that is worse than the problem.

You are not being asked to decide the story is false, because it is not false. The thing being waited for is genuinely hard, that person genuinely played a part, and a great many of the good lines in it are good lines because they are accurate. Ephesians 4:15 says speaking the truth in love, and it puts the two together rather than making a person pick, and it is the same Spirit who leads into all truth without ever making it a weapon.

Retracting a true account is not repentance. It is just a different kind of dishonesty, and it would leave you holding the same weight with a worse story.

What has actually happened is smaller and more mechanical. A story told forty times gets smoother, and smooth stories need shape, and shape needs somebody, and the person who gets recruited is whoever is nearest.

You have not become a bitter woman, and one hardened part in a story is not a character. Romans 8:1 says there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, and it is the Spirit of life named right after who made you free, which means what you noticed in that car park is not the beginning of a case against you.

And I am not going to tell you the waiting ends. I do not know that and nobody does, and any timeline handed to you from a distance is a guess about your life.

What I will say is the thing you were actually asking. You are not being made smaller by this, whatever the story sounds like from the outside. 2 Corinthians 4:16 says the inward man is renewed day by day while the outward wears, and it is the Holy Spirit who does that renewing, which means the wearing you can hear in your own voice is not the whole account of you.

God is the one holding you, and He has been holding you through every one of the forty tellings.