You Are Tired Of Explaining Your Own Body

She has said the sentence about nine times this year and she can tell you what happens after it, every single time, without fail.

There is a small pause. Then there is a face. It is a kind face and it is doing something specific: it is rearranging itself into understanding, which sounds lovely and is actually the sound of a person being reclassified in a room.

And then, quite often, there is a follow up question, asked warmly, about whether she has thought about it in a different form or whether her doctor might reconsider or whether she has prayed about the medication itself.

That last one has happened twice and she has not told anybody about either time.

She takes what she takes. It works and it keeps her steady and she has been on it long enough to remember what she was like before it. Her consultant has been unambiguous. That is the whole of the situation and there is nothing else in it.

What there is now, on top of it, is a job. She has become the woman who has to manage other people's disappointment about her own biochemistry, in a kitchen, on a Thursday, with a tea towel in her hand and a queue of cups behind her.

And it has begun to affect what she brings to God, which is the part she has said to no one. Because if she has to explain herself to a room, some low quiet part of her has started wondering whether she has to explain herself to Him.

If you have watched that face rearrange itself more than once, come here and stand by the counter with me. I am not going to ask you a single question about your prescription.

The explaining was never owed

Let us settle it, and let us settle it properly, because a year of unpaid work has been done in that kitchen.

You do not owe anybody in that building an account of your medication. Not the warm ones, not the well meaning ones, and not the one who asked whether you had prayed about the tablets. That question was not yours to answer and you are allowed to say that you are not going to discuss it and then pass somebody a cup.

You are not on trial in that room, and you were never once required to justify a body to anybody. That is not this page giving you permission. It is written that the Lord looketh on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), and the Holy Spirit is the one who has stood at that counter through every single one of those nine conversations and has never asked you for the reason once.

Who the accounting is actually owed to

There is a sentence in Romans written into a church that was busy grading each other's practices, and it puts a stop to it in one line.

Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand.Romans 14:4

Read where Paul puts the reader in that sentence. The servant is the reader, the master is God, and the person asking about a prescription in a kitchen is not in the chain of command at all.

And then look at the last clause, which most people rush past. He shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand. That is not a warning. That is a promise attached to the servant, and it is about God's ability rather than the servant's.

You are held up by God's own ability, and that has nothing to do with the room's opinion. I am not saying it to end an awkward conversation for you: it is exactly what the verse says and to whom (Romans 14:4), and it is His Spirit, not this page, who makes it something you can stand on in a church kitchen on a Thursday.

And nothing is closed to you

Here is the low quiet part, the one that has never been said out loud, and it needs answering directly.

There is no room you are standing outside of. Going without food was never a qualification and never a rank, so your medication has not shut a door, because there was no door of that kind for it to shut.

You are not further from anything, and there is no version of this you are missing. Scripture says God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34), and it is His Spirit who makes that a fact about your Thursday rather than a doctrine you have heard preached your whole life.

And nobody here is going to offer you a lesser thing to be getting on with. That would agree with the idea that there is a greater thing sitting just out of reach.

Now the sentence this site says everywhere and means every time. Some people must not go without food at all, and being one of them takes nothing away from you. Medication, diabetes, pregnancy, any hard relationship with eating, being underweight, unwell, elderly or simply unsure: speak to your doctor and let their answer be the answer, and keep taking what you have been prescribed. You are not one step further from God because of a prescription. 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 anybody near you is in danger tonight. That is not a road around God. That is help He put in the world on purpose.