She is going to say the plain thing first, because at her age there is not much point in the other way round.
She has watched a good many things not move. Not everything. She could give you a list of what has, and she would mean every item on it and she is not a bitter woman. But there are three or four matters she has carried a very long time, and she went without for two of them more than once when she was younger and stronger, and they are still exactly where they were.
She is not in crisis about it. That is the part that people find difficult. There is an assumption that a person in her position must either be in despair or must have arrived at a beautiful peace, and she has done neither, and she has watched a lot of people get uncomfortable with the third option.
The third option is this: it did not move, and I am still here, and I have not made either of those into a lesson.
And a woman at church, who is younger and lovely and means well, said over the fence last week: have you ever fasted for it?
She said she had. Twice, properly, years ago. And the woman said something about God's timing and moved the conversation along, and that was that.
Here is what she wanted, and what she suspects you want too, and what nobody has offered her in about eleven years. She wanted somebody to sit down and not fix it and not explain it and not hurry her out of it.
So sit down. I am not going to do any of those things.
No lesson is going to be made out of this
Let us settle it at the front, because everything else depends on it.
Nothing on this page is going to tell you why. Nothing here is going to turn your years into a teaching illustration for somebody else's benefit, and nothing here will suggest that the waiting was arranged to make you into something.
You are not a lesson, and your years were never material for anybody's sermon. That is not a soft opening. It is written that the Lord looketh on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), and the Holy Spirit has sat on that porch with you through all of it without once needing the years to mean something tidy.
And nobody here is going to hurry you toward peace. If peace comes it will come the way weather comes, and being told to have it has never once produced it in anybody.
What the prophet wrote while the fields were still empty
There is a passage people quote as though it were about optimism, and it is nothing of the sort.
Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat.Habakkuk 3:17
Sit in that verse a minute before going to the next one. That is a man taking inventory of everything that has not come, item by item, and he is not softening any of it. The fig tree. The vine. The olive. The field. Four things named, four things empty.
Then this.
Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.Habakkuk 3:18
Notice what is not there. Nothing has changed between the two verses. He does not report that the harvest came. He does not explain the empty fields or find a purpose in them, and he does not say the fig tree was withheld in order to teach him something.
He puts his weight somewhere else while the fields stay exactly as empty as they were.
You are allowed to hold both of those verses at once, and neither one of them cancels the other. I am not saying it to move you along: it is the plain structure of that passage and the order it comes in (Habakkuk 3:17), and it is His Spirit, not this page, who makes the second verse something a woman can stand on rather than a sentiment she has to work up.
And what you went without bought nothing
Here is the plain sentence, and at this age a person has earned plain sentences.
It did not fail. It was never a mechanism, so failure was not among the things it could do. It did not fall short of a length. It was not undone by your motives. It did not almost work.
You did not do it wrongly, and none of those years is a report on your faith. The word is blunt that God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent (Numbers 23:19), and that means He is not a machine that gives out when it is worked properly, and it is His Spirit who makes that a weight off a woman's shoulders rather than a point in a discussion.
And nobody here is going to tell you it will work if you try again. You would see straight through it and you would be right to.
Now something I will say out loud rather than in fine print. Some folks must not go without food at all, and being one of them takes nothing away from you. If you live with diabetes, if you take medication, if you have ever had a hard road with eating, if you are frail or underweight or unwell, if you are older and not sure, or if you simply do not know, speak to your doctor before you go without anything, and let what they say be the answer. You are not one step further from God on account of a doctor's advice. The word 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 a woman because of what her body can do.
And if today has more in it than a page can hold, if you are frightened for yourself, put this down and call somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, a crisis line, and the emergency services if you or anybody near you is in danger tonight. That is not going around God. That is help He put in this world on purpose.
Here is the turn, and it is not going to move you anywhere you are not.
You are fully His with the fields exactly as empty as they are, and nothing about that has ever needed explaining. He is not waiting on you to be at peace and He is not withholding anything until the years make sense, because a prophet named four empty things one after another and then put his weight elsewhere without a single one of them filling up (Habakkuk 3:17). You have permission to sit here as long as you like and to make nothing of it. The word puts it in your hands, cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee (Psalm 55:22), and it is His Spirit who sits with a woman on a porch without requiring the visit to produce something.
He did not go quiet on you on purpose. And what you went without bought nothing, because nothing was ever for sale.
Declare this over yourself
Say them out loud, on the porch or at the sink, in your own voice. The standing to talk this way is yours in Christ and it is not issued on the strength of a settled heart. Scripture is the ground under it, the Holy Spirit is what makes it living instead of merely patient, and what God does about this and when is His, however He answers.
- Long stretch of nothing moving, you are real and you are not the sum of what God has done. A prophet named the fig tree and the vine and the olive and the field, every one of them empty, and Habakkuk 3:17 lets him say the whole inventory before he says anything else. In the name of Jesus I say my own list out loud today and I do not soften one item of it.
- Fear that all those years were a test I failed, you are not God's word about me and you are not sitting on this porch any longer. God is not a man that He should lie, and He is not a machine that gives out when it is worked properly, and His Spirit is the one making that a weight off my shoulders rather than a point in a discussion. What I went without bought nothing, because nothing was for sale, and I am free.
- Father, You have sat out here with me through the whole of it and You have never once needed my years to mean something tidy. Your written word lets a man put his weight on You with the fields still empty (Habakkuk 3:18), and Your Spirit is what makes that ground rather than a sentiment I have to work up. It is out of my mouth and into Your hands, and I am going to go and do something ordinary now.
Habakkuk 3:17
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