Starting From Behind And Told To Be Grateful

Every time she has tried to say where she is starting from, somebody has told her how fortunate she is.

They are not wrong. That is what makes it so difficult. She is fortunate, by a great many measures, and she knows it, and she says so, and she means it.

And the sentence she was actually trying to say never gets finished.

It goes like this. She starts to describe the ground she is building on, and about eleven words in somebody says something warm about how far she has come, or how lucky it is that she has what she has, or that some people would give anything for that.

And she says thank you. And she means that too.

And then she goes home and stands in her own kitchen with her coat still on for a minute before she takes it off.

Here is the thing that has been in her chest for about two years and has never once been let out.

She is starting eleven years behind.

Not metaphorically. She could show you the eleven years. There are people doing what she is doing who started at twenty six with a foundation under them that she has spent the last decade constructing from scratch, and they are not bad people and none of this is their fault and she does not want any of them to have less.

She would simply like, once, to be able to say the sentence all the way to the end without being handed gratitude halfway through it.

Because it is not ingratitude. She has checked. She has turned it over at two in the morning more than once, honestly, the way you do, asking herself whether what she is carrying is bitterness in a good coat.

It is not. It is a fact about the ground, and she has not been allowed to name it, and a person cannot build on ground nobody will let them describe.

If somebody keeps handing you gratitude instead of a hearing, come in and pick up a knife. Nobody in this kitchen is going to tell you how lucky you are.

What God calls the ground before He says build

There is a verse about rebuilding that most people quote for the second half, and the first half is where the help is.

And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations.Isaiah 61:4

Count the words He uses for the ground. Old wastes. Former desolations. Waste cities. The desolations of many generations.

Four times, in one verse, He names what the ground actually is.

He does not call them opportunities. He does not say the sites of future glory. He calls them wastes, and He says out loud that some of them have been desolate for generations, which is His way of saying this did not start with the people standing in it.

And then He says build.

You are standing on ground God is willing to name accurately before He asks anybody to build on it. Isaiah 61:4 uses four separate words for desolation in a single sentence about rebuilding, and it is the Holy Spirit who kept every one of them in rather than moving straight to the construction, which means saying plainly what your ground is has scriptural precedent and is not the same thing as complaining about it.

Gratitude and accuracy are not opposites

Now the thing that keeps happening, and let us take it apart, because there is a confusion in it that is costing you.

People hear a description of hard ground and think they are hearing ingratitude. So they reach for the correction, kindly, and they hand you a true sentence about how fortunate you are, and the true sentence lands on top of your true sentence and buries it. Both sentences are true. That is the whole difficulty. Nobody is lying and nobody is being unkind and you are still not being heard.

You are able to hold gratitude and an accurate account of the ground in the same hand, and Scripture does it constantly. Psalm 44:1 has a people saying we have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us what work thou didst in their days, and then the very same psalm describes their present ground as broken and low, and it is the same Spirit who kept both in one song, which means thanksgiving has never required anybody to misdescribe where they are standing.

The two in the morning question

Here is the question that has already been asked honestly at two in the morning, and it deserves an answer rather than another round. Is this bitterness in a good coat?

Look at the evidence you already have. Bitterness wants the other people to have less. You have checked that, more than once, and every time the answer has come back that you want none of them to lose anything.

You were tested on this by your own conscience and you came through it, and there is no charge standing. 1 John 3:20 says if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things, and it is written for people whose self-accusation has run ahead of the facts, and it is the same Spirit who bears witness rather than prosecutes, which means the verdict you keep re-running at two in the morning was settled some time ago.