Carrying Someone And Told To Go Without

She has explained it four times now, and she has started to hear herself doing it.

The first time was easy enough. Somebody said it in a group and she said, cheerfully, that she was not going to be doing that at the moment for obvious reasons, and everybody laughed and the conversation moved on and that was fine.

The second time was in a corridor, one to one, from a woman she respects, and it was not a general suggestion, it was aimed at her and at the thing she has been asking about.

The third and fourth times she has stopped counting the details of.

Here is what has happened. What began as a simple no has turned into a small speech she now delivers, with a reassuring tone in it, because she has learned that if she just says no it seems to require more, and so she supplies the reason before anybody has to ask, and she says it lightly so that nobody feels awkward.

She is doing a lot of work in those conversations, and none of it is hers to do.

And underneath all of it there is something she has not said to anybody. She is asking God about something that matters enormously, and every one of those conversations quietly suggests that there is a door with a handle on it that she is not allowed to reach for right now. Not permanently. Just for now, at the exact moment when she wants it most.

If you have delivered that small speech more than twice, come and sit down here, and take the good chair.

The no was complete the first time

Let us settle that, because a lot of reasons have been supplied that were never required.

No is a complete sentence in this. Whatever your midwife and your doctor have said stands, and it stands without a supporting argument, and nobody in that hall is owed the medical particulars of your pregnancy in a corridor between the coffee and the chairs.

You are not obliged to explain your body to anybody, and you never were. That is not permission granted by this page. It is written that the Lord looketh on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been in every one of those four conversations, hearing what you were doing to keep everybody else comfortable, and He has never once required the speech.

And this needs saying flatly, in the open, because the whole site says it: going without food during pregnancy is not something this page will ever suggest, in any form, at any length, and the answer your team has given you is the answer.

What God was doing while nobody could see it

There is a verse about the part of God's work that happens entirely out of sight, and it is worth sitting with in a season like this one.

For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb.Psalm 139:13

Read what He is doing in that sentence. Covering. Making. Working at close range on something nobody can see and nobody is applauding and nobody is even aware of yet.

That is the same God being discussed in that corridor as though He were waiting on a demonstration. He is not standing at a distance assessing what people can produce. He is the one who does His most careful work in the dark where there is no audience at all.

You are being worked on at close range right now, and so is the person you are carrying. I am not saying that to be lovely about pregnancy: it is what the psalm says about God's own habits (Psalm 139:13), and it is His Spirit, not this page, who makes it something you can lean on in a hall on a Saturday.

And there is no door you are standing outside of

Here is the thing the four conversations have been quietly implying, and it is not true.

There is no handle. There is no closed room. There is not a version of prayer that is currently unavailable to you and will open again later in the year, because going without food was never a mechanism and never a door and never a qualification.

You are not on the outside of anything for a season, and there is no season in this. Scripture says God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34), and it is His Spirit who makes that a fact about your Saturday rather than a doctrine you would agree with in principle.

And nobody here is going to hand you a smaller version to be going on with. That would concede the entire idea that there is a bigger one somewhere that you are missing.

Now the same sentence this site says on every page. Some people must not go without food at all, and being one of them takes nothing away from you. Pregnancy, nursing, diabetes, medication, any history of a hard relationship with eating, being underweight, unwell, elderly or simply unsure: speak to your doctor and let their answer be the answer, and if it is no then it is no and nothing here is disappointed. You are not one step further from God because of a medical instruction. Scripture says the Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works (Psalm 145:9), and the Holy Spirit has never once come in a smaller measure to anybody on account of a body.

And if this week has more in it than a page can carry, if you are frightened for yourself or for the baby, put this down and ring somebody real: your midwife, your doctor, a counselor, a crisis line, and the emergency services if you or anyone near you is in danger tonight. That is not a road around God. That is help He put in the world on purpose.