You Prayed For The One Who Was Leaving

They asked her to do it because of course they did. She is the one you ask.

Twenty-two people in a room that was too warm, a cake nobody had cut yet, and a woman standing in the middle of it who had served that building for fourteen years and was stepping down. Not in trouble. Not under a cloud. Tired, and honest about being tired, and leaving with everybody's blessing.

And somebody said, would you pray for her.

So she went and stood behind her and put her right hand flat between that woman's shoulder blades, the way she has done for a thousand people in that room, and opened her mouth.

And nothing came.

Four seconds. Maybe five. Long enough that somebody near the door opened one eye.

Because what came up instead of words was not compassion and it was not joy for a friend. What came up was: she gets to stop.

It went through her like cold water. She gets to stop and I do not. She gets to be tired out loud in front of twenty-two people with a cake, and I have been tired since a Tuesday in February and I have to be the one whose hand is on her back.

Then the words came, and they were good words, and afterwards two people told her it was beautiful.

She has thought about those four seconds every single day since.

Not about the leaving. About what was in her. Because she has always known what she is for, and what she is for is standing behind people with her hand on their back, and if that hand has envy in it, then something has gone wrong at the root and not in the branches.

She has told nobody. Who would she tell? The woman it was about has gone. Everybody else in that room is somebody she carries.

Now that is you with your hand out, and you have known it was you since the fourth line, and I want you to keep reading anyway.

Nothing here is going to be argued at you

Let me tell you what is not about to happen on this page, because you have braced yourself for both of them.

Nobody here is going to talk you into staying. Not with encouragement, not with guilt, not with a story about a woman who nearly walked away and is so glad now. And nobody here is going to tell you to go. That is not mine to hand you, I do not know your house or your fourteen years, and both of those are only different ways of making a worn out woman carry a decision this morning.

There is no decision on this page. Put it down for twenty minutes. It will still be there.

There is nothing to do here either. No practice to sharpen, nothing to get up earlier for, no discipline to add. You are running on empty, and a suggestion is the last thing empty needs.

What I want is to take one specific weight off you, and it is this one: the idea that what rose in you with your hand on her back has disqualified the hand.

So let me take you to a man who wrote his envy down, and it is in the songbook of the people of God, and he did not soften it.

He was a worship leader. That is his actual job. He wrote for the house of God and he led the singing in it, and this is how he opened one of them:

But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.Psalm 73:2-3

That is the man leading the singing telling you that his feet nearly went out from under him because he wanted somebody else's life.

And it did not stop there. He says it was wearisome to him, and that all the day long he had been stricken, and that he was brutish and ignorant, like a beast toward God. Those are his words about himself, in a psalm, which people then sang in worship.

God put a worship leader's envy into the hymnbook of His own people rather than out of it, which tells you exactly how He receives what rose in you in that room. He did not have it edited. He had it kept, and He had it sung. It is the Holy Spirit, not this page, who takes a song written in a temple and puts it down beside four seconds of silence in a room that was too warm.

And then look at what happens in the middle of that psalm, because it is the whole thing.

He goes into the sanctuary. And then he writes this, and I want you to hear it as the answer to the question you have been asking about yourself: It is the Holy Spirit who does the carrying here, which is what separates a word being spoken over you from a phrase being repeated at you.

Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand.Psalm 73:23

He does not say, I repented and God took me back. He says: the whole time. Continually. While my feet were nearly gone, while I was brutish, while I was envying a life that was not mine, you were holding my right hand. It is the Holy Spirit, not anybody writing, who takes what is written and makes it land in the room you are actually in.

Your right hand was on her back. His was on yours.

God was not deciding whether to keep hold of you during those four seconds. He was already holding you, and He had been the whole time. It is written, I am continually with you, you hold my right hand (Psalm 73:23), and continually leaves no gap in it for a Saturday in a warm room. His Spirit is what makes that a grip and not a sentence.

Now the thing you have been doing to yourself since, which is worse than the envy.

You have been the prosecution and the judge and the only witness, every day, in your own head, on empty. There is no defense because there is nobody in the room. And a court run like that returns one verdict every time.

That court has no standing and heaven has never once read out its verdict. It is written that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1), and the word in it is now, not later and not when you feel better about yourself. The Holy Spirit is the one who reads that into a woman's own kitchen on a Saturday.

And here is one more thing, and it may be the plainest thing on this page. Envy is not evidence that you want a different calling. It is very often evidence that you want a rest, and you have never once been given permission to want one.

That woman did not get something you cannot have. She got a room where being tired was allowed to be said out loud with everybody watching. You have never had that room. Not once in fourteen years.

Wanting to be tired out loud is not the same as wanting out, and God has never treated a worn out woman's honesty as a resignation. It is written that He said, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28), and labor and heavy laden is the plainest description of you that exists. His Spirit is the one who pulls a chair out at a table on the strength of it.

And I need to say this next part plainly, because it matters more than anything else here. If any of this has traveled further than tiredness, if you have found yourself thinking that everyone around you would manage better without you in the world at all, please tell a human being today. In the United States you can call or text 988 at any hour. Anywhere else, your local crisis line or emergency number, and one person who knows your name and will sit with you. Being the woman whose hand is always on somebody else's back does not disqualify you from having one on yours.