Thursday. Not a significant Thursday. A completely ordinary one in the second week of October.
He took a bag, which he had packed at some point when she was not in the house, and he took the car, which was reasonable because it was his name on it and unreasonable in every other way. And at the door he said one sentence.
She is not going to write it down and nobody has any business asking for it. What matters is that it was eleven words, and it was about her rather than about him, and it was said calmly, and she has heard it at traffic lights ever since.
Five years.
She is fifty-one. She is doing well, by any measure anybody would use from the outside. She has work she is good at and a small house that is hers and two friends who are the real thing. She would tell you, and mean it, that she does not want him back and has not for years.
And people say the thing to her. A woman at her church said it in the spring: you have to forgive him, or it will keep you from moving forward. Her sister has said it three times. And every time, the same thing happens, which she has never told anybody: everything in her refuses, and the refusal has nothing to do with wanting him back.
You know that no. There is somebody you are supposed to release and everything in you refuses, and you have been told it is what is holding you back, and nobody has ever asked what the refusal is standing guard over.
Sit down here by the open door. That is exactly where this starts.
What the refusal is protecting
Let me say what is being guarded, because once it is named the fight tends to leave it.
Your no is not protecting a marriage. There is no marriage to protect and you settled that years ago.
It is protecting the fact that you did not deserve it.
Because eleven words were said at a door, calmly, about you, and they have never been withdrawn, and in five years no other authority has issued a correction. And somewhere in you, releasing him has become tangled up with agreeing to those eleven words, as though letting the man go were the same as accepting his summary of your character. So the no comes up, and it comes up hard, and it has been coming up on behalf of a woman standing in a hallway with nobody in the room to say otherwise.
That is not bitterness. That is a person refusing to countersign a lie.
Good. Keep refusing to sign it. Nothing in Scripture asks you to, and forgiveness has never once meant accepting somebody's account of who you are.
You were never asked to agree with him about yourself, and Isaiah 54 says do not fear, for you will not be ashamed, and that your Maker is your husband, which is a sentence God wrote for a woman standing exactly where you were standing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put it in the book for her.
Hear it plainly: releasing him is not excusing him. It does not soften the Thursday. It is not a finding that the eleven words were fair, and it is not agreeing that you were difficult to live with, whatever anybody has implied since.
Fear not, for you will not be ashamed; be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced; for you will forget the shame of your youth.Isaiah 54:4
You have somewhere to put this that is not your own chest at a traffic light, and Isaiah 54 is where God speaks directly to a woman left, and the Holy Spirit is the one who opens a hand that has been closed for five years.
Release is not reconciling and it is not trusting
Now the sentence I want you to have before another word, because women carry this for decades on a misunderstanding.
Releasing him is not reconciling with him. It is not trusting him. It is not answering a message, not meeting for coffee to draw a line under it, not letting him back in the door, and not saying one word to him about any of it, ever. Not one verse in Scripture about forgiveness requires you to go near a person, and I am not going to tell you to.
The woman at church attached moving forward to a reunion that was never in the text. You are free to release him entirely and never see him again, and it is written that so far as it depends on you, you live peaceably with all, which is a sentence with a limit built into it on purpose, and the Spirit is what steadies a woman while her hands come open.
Nothing here requires him to take the eleven words back, to explain, to change, or ever to know that this has happened.
Nobody is putting a clock on you
And one more, before the turn, because somebody said the phrase moving forward and it landed like an accusation.
If you cannot do this today, then you cannot, and you are not in sin for it. There is no timetable anywhere in Scripture for this, and I will not stand over you with one. Five years is not a scandal, and a woman who is doing well by every outside measure is not obliged to be finished on the inside on anybody's schedule.
You are not being accused in this kitchen, and nowhere is it written that an unfinished release is disobedience, and it is the Holy Spirit and not a sentence about moving forward who does this work in a person.
So here is what is happening in this kitchen this evening, with the door open and the rain finished.
You are not being asked to shrink anything, and you are not being asked to agree with one word of it. You are being handed a real account, a competent Judge, and a pair of hands that were never built to carry a case for five years.
You have open hands available this evening, and Romans 12 says never avenge yourselves but leave it to the wrath of God because vengeance is His, and that is the written word and not my advice, and the Holy Spirit is the one doing the loosening while you speak. What he did is God's to weigh, and He was in the hallway on that Thursday, and He heard all eleven words and did not agree with any of them.
You are free to release him and never see him again, and it is written that your Maker is your husband and the Lord of hosts is His name, and the Spirit is what makes that mean something in a small house on an ordinary evening.
And if this has gone somewhere heavier than a Thursday, if you are not sleeping, or the sentence at the door is doing more to you than you can carry alone, please bring a real person in: a counselor, your doctor, a pastor. If you have thought about ending your life, call or text 988 in the United States, or your local emergency number or crisis line, tonight. That is not weak faith. That is a sensible woman getting hands on it, and God is not disappointed in you for needing them.
Now, in your own time, and not the spring's.
Declare this over yourself
Say these where you said his name. You have the standing because Christ is in you, and Scripture says the authority to loose was given to you rather than worked up by you. The Holy Spirit is what carries them, not how ready you feel. And whatever He does with that man, and when, is entirely His, in His own way and in His timing, which is exactly why you can say these tonight.
- Account I have kept on him for five years, you are going out of my hands in the name of Jesus. It is written that vengeance belongs to God and the repaying is His, and release is not excuse and it never has been.
- Eleven words said at my own door, you are not a description of me. Scripture says my Maker is my husband and the Lord of hosts is His name, and the only One who ever made me has never once said what was said in that hallway.
- Lord, You were standing in the hallway on that Thursday and You have been at every traffic light since. It is written that I will not be ashamed and will not be disgraced, and I thank You, because Your Holy Spirit is opening my fingers, and my hands are open now and he is nowhere near me.
Isaiah 54:4
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