The Year I Stopped Singing

Nobody has ever asked her about it, which she finds both a relief and, if she is honest, the loneliest part.

She sings. That is not the past tense in general. She sings in the car. She sings in her kitchen. She sang at her niece's wedding and people cried, which is a thing that has happened to her all her life and which she has never known what to do with.

She does not sing in that building.

Nine years. She stands. She holds the sheet. Her mouth does not open, and she has got very good at looking like a woman who is quietly worshiping, and nobody has ever noticed, or if they have they have been kind enough to let it alone.

It started the year she gave.

She is not going to talk about the room or the man or what was said. Not because she is protecting anybody. Because she has watched what a grievance does to a woman's face over a decade and she is not going to hand her own face over to one.

But she gave. Everything she had put by, and it had taken years to put by, and she did it standing up, out loud, with joy.

And she was believing for something at the time. She is not going to say what it was on this page. It is hers.

It did not happen.

And somewhere in the months after, the singing stopped, and she noticed it had stopped about four weeks after it stopped, and by then it had already become a fact about her.

And nine years on, every silent Sunday arrives as one more line in a long letter from God about what He thinks of her.

And you know that, because there is something you used to do that you stopped doing, and you have been reading your own silence ever since.

Your silence is not His verdict

Let us settle what governs this page. It is not a technique, and nothing on it is being asked of you.

You are looking at an invitation, and the One being tested in it is God. Follow the verb and it lands on Him. He is the one under examination. He is the one who offered to be found out. There is no appeal at the bottom of this page, no request three paragraphs down, nothing to join and nothing to sign, and there never will be on this site. It is written, put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts (Malachi 3:10), and the Holy Spirit is the One who lets a reader hear that verb land where it actually lands.

Now the sentence, 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 served there had gone home hungry. What it names is that the fields would not fail again. It is a sentence about people eating. It was never a switch, and nothing you have ever handed over has operated it, in either direction. The Holy Spirit is the One who takes a line spoken in one decade and makes it live in an ordinary room today.

Now the thing that gets said first on this page.

You were not foolish, and believing God is never the part of a woman's life to be ashamed of. What happened in you that year was faith, and faith is not the same as being taken in. It is written that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1), and the long list that follows is full of people who acted on what God said and did not all see the outcome, and Scripture calls them commended. It is the Holy Spirit, and not this page, who makes that read as an address to a woman standing in the fourth row holding a sheet.

Now the nine years.

Scripture is unusually direct about reading your circumstances as a message, and it does not hedge.

A man born blind is brought to Jesus and the disciples ask whose fault it is, his or his parents. Jesus says neither (John 9:3). Not a lesser fault. Neither.

A tower falls in Siloam and kills eighteen people, and Jesus raises it Himself and asks whether the crowd thinks those eighteen were worse offenders than anybody else in the city, and answers His own question: no (Luke 13:4).

And here is one for a woman who cannot sing in a building. There is a whole psalm about people who sat down by a river in a country they had not chosen and hung their instruments in the trees, and when they were asked for a song they said, how shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land (Psalm 137:4). That is in the Bible. Nobody edited it out, nobody added a verse at the end where they cheer up, and God did not stop being their God for one hour of it.

Your silence is not a verdict, and God has never once read a closed mouth as an argument against a person. It is written that He knows our frame and remembers that we are dust (Psalm 103:14). Remembers. He is not surprised by nine years, and He is not waiting for you to sing before He will look at you. The Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and gets it into the fourth row.

And here is what has not happened, which is the actual subject of this page.

God has not withdrawn from you, and nine silent Sundays a year are not the sound of Him stepping back. It is written that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, is able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38). Things present. Nine years, named in the list, already on the losing side of that sentence. His Spirit is what makes that a floor under a woman rather than a verse she has sung.

Now the guardrail, and it is why this whole site exists.

Nobody here is going to tell you this is the season it turns. Nobody here is going to hint that because you gave, something is on its way to you instead. That is the same machine with a warmer face, and you have had enough of machines. And nobody here is going to tell you to start singing again. Your mouth is your own.

God's faithfulness to you was never payment for what you put by and handed over, and that is the best news on this page, because a thing that was never payment can never be refused. It is written that if we are faithless He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself (2 Timothy 2:13). His faithfulness is not a response to yours. It is what He is made of. The Spirit is the one who makes that the reason a woman can stand in the fourth row without arguing with herself.