The Room Fasts Together And You Sit Out

In his family this has never been a private thing, and that is the whole difficulty.

Where he comes from, when there is a matter, the house does it together. Not as a rule anybody wrote down. It is simply what happens: word goes round, and the aunts organize something, and by the evening every adult in three streets knows what is being asked about and has joined in without a single announcement being made.

He cannot. His body has not allowed it since he was twenty six and his doctor has been unambiguous about it for years, and everybody in that family knows and nobody has ever made him feel bad about it for one moment.

That is what makes it difficult to describe to anybody outside. Nobody has excluded him. There is no unkindness anywhere in this. He is loved, he is fed first, an aunt makes him a plate before anybody else gets one, and that is precisely the shape of the problem: he is being looked after by a room that is doing something he is not in.

He sits in that courtyard on those evenings with a plate in front of him and he is the only one eating, and everybody is warm with him, and he has never felt more separate from people he loves.

He has not said it to anybody. There is no version of that sentence that does not sound ungrateful.

And a cousin said last week, meaning it as pure inclusion: we are all doing it again for your situation.

He said thank you. And he meant it, and something in him sat down a long way inside.

If you have been the only one eating in a warm room, come and sit under this vine with me a while.

The loneliness is real and it is not ingratitude

Let us say that first, because it has been held all this time as though it were a fault.

A person can be entirely loved and entirely outside the same activity, and both of those can be completely true at once. Nobody has to have done anything wrong for that to hurt. It is not a complaint about your family and it is not a failure of gratitude, and holding a plate while everybody else is doing something together is one of the lonelier things a person can do in a warm room.

You are not ungrateful, and you were never once required to feel included in order to be loved. That is not a soft opening. It is written that the Lord looketh on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been sitting in that courtyard on those evenings and has known exactly what was happening while everybody was being kind to you.

And this is the site's plain rule and it holds here too: your doctor is right, nothing on this page suggests otherwise, and if the answer is no then it is no.

What the New Testament tells a room to do

There is a line in Romans, written into a church that was split down the middle over exactly this kind of practice, and it is addressed to the room rather than to the person outside it.

Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God.Romans 15:7

Notice the direction it faces. Paul does not tell the person who cannot to try harder or to feel better about it. He turns and speaks to everybody else, and he gives them a standard, and the standard is how Christ received them.

That whole chapter is about a church where some kept a practice and some did not, and the argument Paul settles is not about which group is right. It is about a room learning to hold both without either group being on the outside of it.

You are received on the terms Christ received you, and that was settled long before anybody in that family organized anything. I am not saying it to smooth over an evening: it is the instruction the passage gives, and the direction it faces (Romans 15:7), and it is His Spirit, not this page, who makes that something a man can hold in a courtyard with a plate in front of him.

And there is nothing you are getting a smaller share of

Here is the thing that sat down a long way inside when your cousin spoke.

There is no share. Going without food is not a currency that a room accumulates and a person contributes to, so you are not putting in less. There is no ledger with your name entered smaller than everybody else's, because there is no ledger.

You are not receiving a reduced portion of anything. Scripture says God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34), and it is His Spirit who makes that a fact about a courtyard in the evening rather than a doctrine you would agree with.

And nobody here is going to hand you a smaller thing to do instead so that you can feel included. That would agree with the whole idea that the others are doing the real thing and you are doing an accommodation.

Now the sentence this site says everywhere. Some people must not go without food at all, and being one of them takes nothing away from you. Any medical condition, medication, pregnancy, a 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. 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 a household 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 telephone 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 a road around God. That is help He put in the world on purpose.