The Thing I Keep Picking Back Up

Eleven years, and she could not tell you how many times.

Hundreds, probably. It is a real worry, an ordinary one, the kind that does not sound like much when you say it to somebody but which has been sitting on the same shelf in her chest since 2015.

And she is not a woman who does nothing about things. She has handed it over.

At the sink, mostly. At the sink she says it out loud, properly, all of it, and she means every word, and she has meant it every single time.

And then somewhere between the sink and the back door, or the sink and the bed, or in one memorable case between one sentence of the handing over and the next, she picks it back up.

Not deliberately. It is in her hands again and she did not notice bending down.

And here is what has grown up around that over eleven years, which is the actual weight and is much heavier than the worry ever was.

She has come to believe that the picking up is evidence.

That a woman who genuinely handed a thing over would not keep finding it in her hands. That the repetition proves the first one was not real. That somewhere there are people who put things down once, and stay put down, and that she is not one of them and probably cannot be.

And you know that exactly, because you have handed something over more times than you can count and started to read the count as a verdict on you.

Nobody is counting the times

Let us settle what governs this whole page. Nothing on it is being asked of you, there is no appeal at the bottom, and there are no steps in it anywhere.

You are looking at an invitation, and the One being tested inside it is God. Follow the verb in the famous sentence and it lands on Him. He is under examination. He is the one who offered to be found out. It is written that He said, put me to the test (Malachi 3:10), and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes that an offer a person can actually accept rather than a line they can only quote.

Here it is, in its own room:

Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.Malachi 3:10

Said to a nation, in one decade, about one building, where the store room had emptied and the families who worked there had gone home hungry. It is a sentence about people eating, and it is spoken in a father's voice about a house that has gone wrong: come and find out whether I am who you have decided I am.

Now the counting, because the counting is the whole trouble here and the worry is not.

A count is safe, in its own miserable way. If handing over is a thing that either takes or does not take, then there is a standard, and standards can be met, and a woman who has not met one yet can at least know where she stands.

And the price is what has been sitting on you at the sink for eleven years: if it is a standard, then hundreds of times is hundreds of failures, and you have been keeping that tally on yourself without ever once writing it down.

You are dealing with a Father and not a test, and He has never once counted the times. Jesus put it in family terms: which of you, if his son asks for a fish, will give him a serpent, or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion (Luke 11:11). There is no tally in that sentence. There is a child asking, presumably not for the first time that week, and a Father who is not the sort of person who keeps score of how often. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a line like that off a page and stands it at a kitchen sink.

Now the repetition itself, because Scripture is not embarrassed by it in the least.

Repetition is not evidence of failure, and God has never treated an anxious person's returning as an insult. Jesus told a story specifically about somebody who kept coming back and would not stop, and the point He drew from it was not that they should have got it right the first time (Luke 18:1). And Paul, who asked God three times about the same thing, wrote the three times down in a letter rather than hiding them (2 Corinthians 12:8). Nobody edited it out. His Spirit is the one who makes that read as permission rather than as an exception granted to apostles.

And the picking up itself.

God is not disappointed in you, and He has never once sighed when a woman came back to the sink. It is written that as a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear Him, for He knows our frame, He remembers that we are dust (Psalm 103:13). He remembers. He is not being patient with you against His better judgment. He knows exactly what a person is made of and He was never expecting otherwise. The Spirit is the one who makes that a floor rather than a comfort.

Now where the trust goes, and it is smaller than eleven years of trying.

Trust is not a technique and it has no steps, so nobody here is going to give you a method for making it stick. What it has is somebody to hand it to, and no limit on how often. You name it, you hand it over, and if it is in your hands again by the back door you hand it over again, and that is not a failure of the first time. That is what having a Father is like.

Not money. Nothing on this site will ever ask you for that or route anything anywhere, including here. One real thing: the worry on the shelf since 2015.

You are owed nothing for trusting Him, and there is no number of times that would earn anything either. It is written that we have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba, Father (Romans 8:15). A child says that word many times a day and nobody in the house is counting.

And if you find this hard, you are not failing at it. Eleven years of coming back is eleven years of coming back, and that is not the shape of somebody who has given up.