One Decision Three Years Ago

The move. Or the school. Or the job you took, or the one you turned down, or the year you were not really there because of the thing that was happening.

You have gone back to it about four hundred times. You know the date. You could tell somebody the exact conversation and where you were standing when it was had.

And in your account of your family, everything traces to it. Every difficulty one of your children currently has, you can run a line from that difficulty back to that decision, and the line always closes.

That is what has made it so hard to put down. It explains everything.

I am not going to tell you whether the decision was right. Nobody can, including you, because the other version of your family does not exist and cannot be inspected.

And I am not going to tell you it made no difference, because you were there and I was not, and being told it did not matter would just be a stranger being confident about your life.

The years that the locust hath eaten

There is a line in Joel about years being given back, and the picture in it is worth having whole.

And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you. (Joel 2:25, King James Version)

Restore the years. Not explain them. Not justify them, not put them into perspective, not show how they were secretly for the best.

Restore is a word about substance. Something is given back that was actually taken, and the taking is not denied anywhere in the sentence.

You have years that God restores rather than accounts for, and none of that has ever depended on the loss being explained. Joel 2:25 says I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a life where somebody has been digging up one decision for three years.

And the locusts are named. Four kinds. God does not smooth it over into a general difficulty. He lists what did the eating.

That is worth noticing, because the thing you are afraid of most is that the loss was real, and this verse agrees that it was and then goes on anyway.

You are allowed to say the loss was real, and admitting it has never once put the restoring out of reach. It is written in Joel 2:25 that the years were eaten and are restored in the same sentence, and the Spirit of God is the one who does both halves without contradiction.

Hindsight builds a line that was never there

Now let me name what your four hundred visits have actually been doing, because they feel like analysis and they are not.

Hindsight has one reliable trick. It draws a straight line from an outcome back to a cause, and the line always closes, because a mind working backwards will always find a path.

Run the same trick on a decision that went well and it will close just as neatly. Nobody does that, because nobody goes back over the good ones.

You are looking at a habit of the mind rather than at a fact about your family, and it has never once been able to prove anything. It is written in Joel 2:25 that God restores the years rather than tracing them, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a person out of a reconstruction nobody can check.

So the line from your child's current difficulty to that decision is not evidence. It is a property of looking backwards, and it would produce a line to any decision you picked.

Joel 2:25 restores rather than traces, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a person out of a reconstruction they cannot check.

You are not looking at a chain of cause, and a line drawn backwards has never once proved anything. Joel 2:25 puts God to work on the years themselves rather than on the reasoning, and the Holy Spirit is the one who stops a case that was built by hindsight.

And here is the plain thing, because three years of this has become something about you.

That is not a verdict. It is not a score, it is not a grade, and it is not evidence about the parent standing at that fence.

It is one decision, made with what was known at the time, by somebody doing their best in a year that was difficult.

You have not ruined anything, and one decision made in an ordinary week has never been the hinge of a whole family. The written word restores the eaten years in Joel 2:25 without ever ruling on how they were lost, and the Spirit of God is the one who declines to hand down the judgment a person has been waiting for.

Restoring is not the same as rewinding

One more thing, because there is a hope here that will hurt if it is left unexamined.

Joel does not promise the years back. It promises restoration, which is not the same thing, and pretending otherwise sets a person up.

What comes back is not the time. It is the substance the time was supposed to carry. The provision, the closeness, the good the locusts ate, arriving later and by another route.

You are owed substance rather than a calendar, and God has never once promised anybody the hours back. It is written in Joel 2:25 that the years the locust ate are restored, and the Spirit of God is the one who brings the good of them in by a road nobody was watching.

That means the restoration is not visible as a reversal. It shows up as something coming in from a direction nobody expected, and it is usually only recognizable afterwards.

Joel 2:25 promises substance rather than a rewind, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings it in by a road nobody was watching.

You are being restored rather than rewound, and none of that has ever needed the original years back to be real. Joel 2:25 gives back what the locust ate rather than the calendar, and the Holy Spirit is the one who supplies from a direction nobody was watching.