Thirty-four. That is how many were in that room. She has counted, on paper, from a class photograph, which tells you something.
She was eleven. It took about nine seconds and it was one sentence and it was said in a normal speaking voice with the whole room already quiet, which is the part nobody understands unless it happened to them. Not shouting. Shouting would have been survivable. It was said the way you would read out the weather.
She is fifty-two.
She has a degree and a family and a job she is trusted in. She has taught adults, which is its own kind of joke. And that sentence has never once left the room it was said in, because she carries the room with her.
The teacher is almost certainly dead. She has never checked and will not.
And people say the thing to her. Her husband said it years ago and had the sense never to repeat it. A woman at church said it in the spring, warmly: she was probably having a terrible year, you know. People were different then. You have to forgive her.
And everything in her refuses. Not a maybe. It is a whole body no and it arrives before any thought does, and it is loudest when somebody explains the woman to her.
You know that no. There is somebody you are supposed to release and everything in you refuses, and people keep explaining them to you, and nobody has ever once asked what the refusal is standing guard over.
Sit down here at this table. That is exactly where this starts.
What the refusal is protecting
Let me tell you what is being guarded, because once it is named the fight usually goes out of it.
Your no is protecting an eleven year old.
Not the woman of fifty-two with a degree and a job people trust her with. Her. Because thirty-four children heard it, and not one of them stood up, and no adult ever came back later and told her it was not true. Nobody ever issued a correction. And in the absence of a correction from anybody with authority, your refusal has been the correction. For forty-one years it has been the only thing in the world standing in that room saying: that was not right and it was not fair and she should not have said it.
That is not bitterness. That is the only adult who ever showed up for that child, doing her job.
Good. Keep refusing. Nothing in Scripture asks you to say it was fair, and forgiveness has never once meant issuing a woman a character reference.
You were never asked to explain her, and Psalm 10 says God sees mischief and vexation and takes it into His hands, and that the helpless commits himself to Him, and the Holy Spirit is not asking a woman of fifty-two to talk an eleven year old out of the truth.
Hear it plainly: releasing her is not excusing her. It does not make the nine seconds smaller. It is not a finding that people were different then, and it is not agreeing that she was probably having a terrible year, which she may well have been and which is not the point and never was.
You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in Your bottle. Are they not in Your book?Psalm 56:8
Look at what God does with a thing like this. He keeps count. He files it. He does not lose it and He does not reclassify it and He does not need thirty-four eleven year olds to corroborate it. You have a record held by somebody with perfect memory and no interest in a softer word, and Psalm 56 is where it is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who opens a hand that has been closed since 1984.
Release is not reconciling and it is not trusting
Now the sentence I want you to have before another word, because women carry this to the end of their lives on a misunderstanding.
Releasing her is not reconciling with her. It is not trusting her. It is not looking her up, not going to a grave, not writing anything, and not thinking one warm thought about her ever. There is no verse in Scripture that requires you to go near a person or to soften your assessment of one, and I am not going to tell you to.
You are free to release her entirely and never say one kind word about that woman, and it is written that so far as it depends on you, you live peaceably with all, which is a phrase with a limit built into it on purpose, and the Spirit is what steadies a woman while her hands come open.
Nothing here requires her to have been sorry, to have known, or to be alive.
Nobody is putting a clock on you
And one more, before the turn, because somebody said the words forty-one years to you once with their eyebrows up.
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 am not going to build one out of your age. Forty-one years is not a scandal, and a woman who was eleven when it happened does not owe anybody a schedule.
You are not being accused at this table, and nowhere is it written that an unfinished release is disobedience, and it is the Holy Spirit and not a warm woman at church who does this work in a person.
So here is what is happening in this hall today, with the bunting up and the food going out and somebody laughing at the far end.
You are not being asked to shrink anything, and you are not being asked to explain that woman to yourself. You are being handed a real account, kept perfectly, by somebody who was in the room, and a pair of hands that were never built to hold a case for forty-one years.
You have open hands available today, 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 opinion, and the Holy Spirit is the one doing the loosening while you speak. What she did is God's to weigh, and He was standing at the back of that classroom, and He does not need thirty-four witnesses.
You are free to release her and never think one warm thought about her, and it is written that He has kept count and put the tears in His bottle, and the Spirit is what makes that mean something to a woman of fifty-two. The child is not being left in that room. She is being handed to somebody who has been standing there the whole time.
And if this has gone somewhere heavier than a classroom, if you are not sleeping, or what happened at eleven 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, today. 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 her 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 the steadiness of your voice. And whatever He does with that woman, and when, is entirely His, in His own way and in His timing, which is exactly why you can say these without waiting to feel ready.
- Case I have carried since I was eleven, 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.
- Fear that letting go abandons her, get out of this hall. Scripture says He has kept count of my tossings and put my tears in His bottle, and she is being handed to somebody who has been standing at the back of that classroom since 1984.
- Lord, You heard all nine seconds of it and You have watched forty-one years of me. It is written that they are all in Your book, and I thank You, because Your Holy Spirit is opening my fingers, and I am not the only one keeping count any more.
Psalm 56:8
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