Her Thing Moved And Yours Did Not

She heard the news in a car park and she made her face do the right thing before she had even finished processing it.

It was genuinely good news. It was the thing her friend had been asking about for three years, and it happened, and her friend rang her first, which tells you what that friendship is. She said all the right things and she meant almost all of them and she cried a bit on the phone and the crying was real.

Then she sat in the car for eleven minutes without turning the engine on.

Because it is the same thing. Not similar. The same. They started asking at roughly the same time, they have talked about it on walks, they went without for it together at one point, both of them, which nobody else knows about. And hers moved and this one did not.

And what came up in her in that car park was not a feeling she has words she likes for. It was not exactly envy and it was not exactly grief and it had something in it that felt like being passed over on purpose, which she knows is not true, and knowing that did not help at all.

She has been carrying it since. She still rings her friend. She is still glad. And under the gladness there is a thing with weight in it that she has not confessed to anybody, because how do you say it without sounding like a person who begrudges her closest friend a good week?

And somebody at church, who knows none of this, said: keep going, maybe fast for it again.

She said she would. And what she felt was not hope. It was tiredness, and something sharper underneath it that she would rather not name.

If you have sat in a car park with your face still arranged, come and sit down here.

The second feeling is not a scandal

Let us take that first, because it has been keeping you from saying any of this out loud.

What arrived in that car park is what arrives in a human being who has wanted something for three years and watched it land next door. It is not a sign that your love for her is fake. Both things are in you and both are real, and a person is quite capable of meaning the congratulations and going home with a stone in their chest.

You are not a fraud, and you were never once judged for the eleven minutes. That is not a soft opening. It is written that the Lord looketh on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), and the Holy Spirit was in that car park and saw both of the things in you and has never asked you to pick one and pretend the other is not there.

And nothing on this page will tell you why hers moved. Nobody knows why. Anybody who offers you a reason is guessing and calling it faith, and the guess will almost certainly have you in it as the variable.

What Jesus said to a man asking about somebody else

There is a moment right at the end of John where Peter does precisely what you did in the car.

He has just been given a hard word about his own future. And he turns and sees another disciple and asks the most human question in the New Testament: what about him?

Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me.John 21:22

Read the tone carefully, because people get it wrong. That is not a rebuke about jealousy. There is no scolding in it and no lecture about comparison being a sin.

It is a boundary drawn kindly. He tells Peter that another person's story is not information Peter needs in order to walk his own, and then He hands him back the only thing that was ever his: follow thou me.

You are not required to make her outcome mean something about yours. I am not saying that to shut the subject down: it is the actual answer Jesus gave to that exact question (John 21:22), and it is His Spirit, not this page, who makes it a weight off rather than a door closed in your face.

And what you both went without bought nothing

Here is the plain sentence, and it matters double for you because you did it together.

Neither of you operated anything. It was never a mechanism, so one version of it did not work and the other version did not fail. There was no length hers reached that yours fell short of. There was nothing purer in her heart on the days you both went without.

You did not do it wrongly, and the difference between the two outcomes is not a difference between the two of you. Scripture is blunt that God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent (Numbers 23:19), which means He is not a device that gives out when it is worked correctly, and it is His Spirit who makes that a weight lifting rather than a comparison you keep losing.

Nobody here is going to promise you it will work next time either. You would hear the hollowness immediately.

Now something said in the open rather than in fine print. Some people must not go without food at all, and being one of them takes nothing away from you. If you live with diabetes, if you are pregnant or nursing, if you take medication, if you have ever had a hard relationship with eating, if you are underweight, unwell or simply unsure, speak to your doctor before you go without anything, and let their answer be the answer. You are not one step further from God because of a doctor's 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, put this down and ring somebody real: 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.