Saying Yes From a Suitcase

The offer is good. That is the part that has kept her awake, because if it were a bad offer this would take four minutes.

It came in April, from somebody she respects, and it is exactly the kind of thing she would have wanted at any other point in the last decade. It would take about two years. It is the sort of thing a person says yes to.

And her life is currently held together with tape. Her lease ends in November and the building is being sold. She is on a contract that is being reviewed. She moved cities eighteen months ago and has not unpacked two boxes. Her sister is unwell in a way nobody has a timeline for.

So the arithmetic she does at two in the morning is this: a two-year yes, from a life with nothing in it longer than eleven months. It feels like signing something with somebody else's hand.

And she has noticed, and hates, that the way she has been answering is by not answering. Warm, interested, and slow. The person who asked her has been extremely gracious about it and that makes it worse.

Anybody who has been offered something good at the wrong moment knows this. And I want to say straight away that I am not going to tell anybody whether to say yes. I do not know the offer, the sister, the lease or the person. Anybody who tells a stranger from a distance to take the leap is enjoying the sound of their own encouragement.

Where the strength is located

Let me put down a line and notice the two words that are not the ones anybody expects.

For thus saith the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.Isaiah 30:15

In quietness and in confidence. Not in certainty. Not in settled circumstances. Not in having enough information. Isaiah is speaking into a national panic in which everybody is arranging alliances and horses and contingencies, and he says the strength is somewhere else entirely.

And the word for confidence there is a trust word, closer to leaning than to self-assurance. It is not a claim about how sure she feels. It is about what she is leaning on while she does not feel sure.

You are strengthened in quietness and in leaning rather than in having the circumstances line up. That is not a soft word for a woman doing arithmetic at two in the morning. It is what is written in Isaiah 30, and His Spirit is the one who takes a written line and puts it under somebody on a rooftop. The lease ends in November. The strength is not located in the lease.

And notice the sentence just after it, which the prophets are honest enough to include: and ye would not. The people in that chapter did not take it. Isaiah records the refusal without softening it, which tells you this was a real offer to real people who found it difficult, and not a piece of advice from somebody who had never tried it.

You have a strength on offer that does not require your life to be tidy first, and the offer stands whether or not you feel able to take it today. Isaiah 30:15 is where that is written, and it is the Spirit who makes an old prophet land at a table on a roof.

Nobody is going to say take the leap

Now the part this category exists for.

Answering slowly is not cowardice. It is not a failure of faith and it is not evidence that she does not trust God. It is what a careful person does when asked for two years by a life that runs eleven months at a time, and the carefulness is a virtue that has been misfiled as a fault by people who like decisive stories.

I am also not going to run the other way and tell her to protect herself. That would be the same crime in reverse. I do not know whether this is the right thing. Neither does she yet, and that is allowed.

What I will do is remove one thing from the calculation, because I think it is doing most of the damage.

She has been treating the answer as a statement about whether her life is stable enough to deserve good things. It is not that. It never was. It is a question about one offer.

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.Proverbs 3:5-6

Direct thy paths is a making-straight word, and it is future and continuous. It describes something God does as a person goes, not a briefing handed over before departure.

You were promised direction along the way rather than a map before it, and you have never once been asked to see the two years first. Proverbs 3:6 is the written word for it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person move without the whole picture.

You are held right now, on this roof, with the offer open and no idea about November. It is written that in quietness and confidence shall be your strength, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that true in a woman with two boxes she has not unpacked in eighteen months.

If any of this ever turns dangerous, and staying safe genuinely comes into question, call or text a crisis line where you live, 988 in the United States, and tell a doctor or a counselor plainly about the two in the mornings and about your sister. There is more than one thing being carried here, and being strengthened by God has never been a reason to carry all of it alone.