I Expected An Easier Relationship Than This

You had a picture. Everybody does and almost nobody admits it.

Not a detailed one. Just a sense of how it would be between you and that child by about now. Easy, mostly. The kind of thing you have with your sister, or the thing you can see between two other people at a family gathering.

And what you have instead is careful. Warm sometimes, and careful, with a small amount of management in every conversation and a thing you do not bring up.

Nothing is wrong. That is the difficulty in saying any of this to anybody. Nothing is wrong and there is no incident and nobody has done anything, and you are still quietly mourning something that has not happened.

I am not going to promise you it will change. I do not know your child and I am not going to hand you a prediction dressed up as encouragement.

And I am not going to tell you to be grateful for what you have got, because that is a standard, and being told to be grateful about a grief is the fastest way to make a person stop talking.

Why art thou cast down, O my soul

There is a line in Psalm 42 where a man talks to himself, and the way he does it is the whole lesson.

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance. (Psalm 42:5, King James Version)

He asks himself a question and does not answer it.

That is worth noticing. He says why art thou cast down, and then instead of producing a reason, he gives his soul an instruction: hope thou in God.

Which means the psalm does not require the grief to be explained before anything else can happen. The question hangs there unanswered and the hoping starts anyway.

You are permitted to be cast down without explaining it, and the hoping has never once had to wait for a reason to be found. Psalm 42:5 says why art thou cast down, O my soul, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a house where somebody cannot name what has gone wrong because nothing has.

And the word disquieted is doing something specific. It is not despair and it is not anger.

Disquiet is the low unsettledness of a thing not being how it was meant to be, running underneath an ordinary week, and it is exactly the right word for what you have been carrying.

You have a disquiet that Scripture has a word for, and it has never once been too small a thing to be named there. It is written in Psalm 42:5 that the soul is disquieted, and the Spirit of God is the one who has language for something that has no incident attached to it.

The picture was not a promise

Now let me name what is actually being grieved, because it is worth being accurate about.

The grief is not aimed at a child. They are here, they are fine, and the relationship in that house is real.

What is being grieved is a picture. And the picture was never a promise from anybody. It assembled itself out of a childhood, and other people's families, and something seen once at a wedding, and none of those were ever an undertaking about your house.

That matters, because a grief attached to a promise is a grief about betrayal, and a grief attached to a picture is something much gentler and much easier to set down.

You have not been let down by anybody, and a picture that assembled itself has never once made a promise to keep. It is written in Psalm 42:5 that the hoping goes into God, and the Spirit of God is the one who moves an expectation off something that was never able to hold it.

Psalm 42:5 sends the hope to God rather than to a picture, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves an expectation off a thing that was never going to hold it.

You are grieving a picture rather than a broken promise, and nobody has ever once undertaken to give you the relationship you imagined. Psalm 42:5 puts the hoping in God, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an expectation off something that was never able to carry it.

And here is the plain thing, because this has quietly become a verdict on the two of you.

That is not a verdict. It is not a score, it is not a grade, and it is not evidence about the relationship you actually have.

It is a comparison between something real and something imagined, and imagined things always win comparisons because they have no bad Tuesdays in them.

You have not failed at a relationship, and a careful warmth has never once been the failure of an easy one. The written word instructs the soul to hope in God in Psalm 42:5 rather than to account for its disquiet, and the Spirit of God is the one who refuses to score a real relationship against an imagined one.

I shall yet praise him

There is a clause at the end of the verse and the word yet is carrying it.

For I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.

Yet is a future word and it is doing something careful. He does not say what will change. He does not describe the resolution and he does not promise himself a particular outcome.

He says there will be praising, and he leaves the shape of it entirely open, which is the only honest thing a person in the middle of a disquiet can say.

You are not owed a forecast, and the yet in that verse has never once come with a description attached. It is written in Psalm 42:5 that I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds a future open without filling it in for anybody.

That is what hope is in the Scriptures. Not a prediction about a child, not a guarantee about a relationship, but a settled expectation that there is more of God coming into a situation that is currently flat.

Psalm 42:5 promises praise without describing the reason for it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds a future open without filling it in.

You have a yet in front of you, and it has never once required anybody to tell you what it is going to look like. Psalm 42:5 says I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a future open rather than issuing a forecast.