She Leaves Before The Decisions

She has a reason every single time and every reason is true.

The parking, which genuinely runs out. The dog, who genuinely needs letting out. An early start, which is genuinely early. The drive, which is genuinely forty minutes and worse in the wet.

She says it at the door, and everybody says of course, and one of them usually offers to walk her out.

And she is in the car by twenty past eight, which is about ten minutes before the part of the evening where things actually get decided.

She has been doing this for about six years.

She noticed it in October. Not the leaving, which she has always known about. The pattern.

Because each reason on its own is completely ordinary and nobody has ever questioned it, including her. It is only when you take six years of them and put them in a row that it stops looking like a coincidence and starts looking like something she arranged.

Here is what she has not said out loud, and she has not really said it to herself either until quite recently.

She thinks she may have arranged it.

Not consciously. She has never sat down and decided to be out of that room. But somewhere in the last six years, a set of reasons has assembled itself with remarkable consistency around a single hour, and a woman who is honest about herself has to at least notice that.

And underneath that there is a second thing, which is worse and quieter.

If she is not in the room, nothing that gets decided is anything to do with her, and she never has to find out what would have happened if she had said something.

If you are always gone by then, come in and sit by the fire. There is cake and nobody here is going anywhere.

The question a man asked a woman with every reason to stay out

There is a moment where somebody with a very good reason to keep her head down is asked a question rather than given an instruction.

For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place ... and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?Esther 4:14

Two things in that verse and both of them matter.

The first is that he tells her plainly the outcome does not depend on her. Deliverance will arise from another place. He is not putting the fate of a people on her shoulders and he is careful to say so.

The second is the question. Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this.

Not: you must. Not: this is your moment and if you fail it is over. A question, asked of a woman with real reasons to stay quiet, about whether she has noticed where she happens to be standing.

You are being asked whether you have noticed where you are standing rather than told that everything depends on you. Esther 4:14 puts the deliverance beyond her responsibility and the question inside it, and it is the Holy Spirit who kept both halves in the same verse, which means the invitation to be in that room has never come with the weight you have been avoiding.

What the reasons actually are

Now the six years, and let us go gently, because there is a way of saying this that would be cruel and it is not true anyway.

The reasons are real. The parking runs out. The dog needs letting out. Nobody has been lying to anybody.

What has happened is subtler and far more common than deceit. A person with a quiet reluctance does not usually invent excuses. They simply notice the true ones more, and give them more weight, and let them settle in a particular place in the evening, and after six years there is a pattern that nobody designed and everybody could have predicted.

You have not been dishonest, and noticing an arrangement is not the same as confessing to one. Psalm 139:23 says search me, O God, and know my heart, try me, and know my thoughts, and it is written by somebody inviting the examination rather than dreading it, and it is the same Spirit who searches the deep things, which means what you noticed in October was the search working, and it is safe.

The quieter thing underneath

Here is the second thing, said plainly, because it is the actual engine.

Out of the room, there is never any need to find out what would have happened.

That is the protection. Not from the room, and not from the people. From the discovery.

You were protecting yourself from an outcome rather than from a group of people, and God has never once required anybody to guarantee an outcome before speaking. Esther 4:14 puts the deliverance arising from another place if she says nothing, which removes the weight from her entirely, and it is the same Spirit who is called the Spirit of truth, which means the thing you have been avoiding was never yours to carry in the first place.