Always the Strong One

There are four people in that family who ring her and there is nobody she rings, and Cherry has never once said that out loud, and she said it to herself for the first time this year in a car park.

Her mother rings about the appointments. Her brother rings about money, or about a woman, or about something he has decided to be furious about. Her son rings when it is bad, and it is bad more than he tells her. Her aunt rings because she is eighty and lonely and Cherry is the one who picks up.

She is forty six. She is the one who fixes things. She has been the one who fixes things since she was about fourteen and her mother got ill the first time, and by now it is not a role she plays, it is the shape her whole life is built in.

And nobody, in thirty two years, has ever asked her how she is and waited for the second answer.

She stopped drinking last summer. It had become the way she got from eight o'clock at night to sleeping, and the thing it did was not really pleasure, it was closing the shop. An hour where nobody could get in and nothing had to be handled.

And what is underneath, which she has now had a whole year of, is not sadness. It is a tiredness that has no bottom to it, and no dramatic story attached, and no acceptable way of being mentioned to anybody who knows her.

You know that tiredness. It might not be family. It might be a job, a church, a ward, a street. You are the one who holds it. And there is no way to say you are tired without it landing on somebody else as a problem, so you do not say it.

You are handled by somebody who will not break what is nearly gone, and you were never at risk of being finished off for being worn. Isaiah says a bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench, and that is a promise specifically about the handling of what is barely holding; that is exactly what stands written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that real for a woman sitting in a car park.

A bruised reed shall he not break

Let me name it exactly, because if you name it wrong you will do the wrong thing about it.

You are not resentful. You would do all of it again, and most of it you would do gladly. And you are not looking for anybody to be told off, and if this article started criticizing your mother or your brother you would close it, and you would be right to.

The thing you are carrying is simpler than that and it has no villain in it: you have been strong for thirty two years and nobody has ever built you a place to be tired. That is all. And it is enormous.

And I am not going to tell you that resolving it is what will keep you standing, because you have enough assignments.

So here is what God says about how He handles a thing that is nearly finished.

A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth.Isaiah 42:3

A bruised reed is worth nothing. It was a cheap thing when it was whole, and bruised, it is useless: it will not stand, it will not play, it will not measure. Every practical person in the world would snap it and throw it away, and nobody would think twice.

And the smoking flax is a wick that has gone out and is producing nothing but smoke and an unpleasant smell. You pinch it. That is what you do with it.

And this passage, which is about the servant God is sending, says: not those two. Not those. Whatever else He does, He does not finish off the thing that is nearly gone.

You are handled by somebody who does not finish off what is nearly gone, and you were never going to be discarded for being worn out. That is what stands written in Isaiah 42, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a description of how you specifically are being handled at forty six.

And notice the setting. That whole passage is about power. He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles, He shall not fail nor be discouraged till He have set judgment in the earth. It is a description of enormous authority, and right in the middle of it, the thing God chooses to specify about how that authority behaves is that it is careful with damaged small things.

You are inside the reach of a power that is described by its gentleness, and you were never dealing with strength that has no time for the worn. Scripture defines the servant's might by how He treats a bruised reed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps those two facts fastened together.

And here is the thing about a reed and a wick that is worth saying to you in particular. Both of them are things that were made to be used. A reed makes music or measures a wall; a wick carries a flame. Neither of them is ornamental. God is not preserving something decorative. He is preserving working things that have been worn out by working, which is the most precise description of your last thirty two years anybody could write.

You are a working thing that has been worn by working, and you were never damaged in the wrong way to be kept. The written word picks two objects that exist to be used, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that choice of image speak directly to a woman everybody rings.

And the plain thing, which this site says every time and means. You are allowed to be helped, and being helped does not cost you your position in that family. A counselor is a good thing. So is a doctor, so is a friend who is not one of the four, so is a room where people say true things out loud and nobody needs anything from you afterward. That is God's kindness with a face on it. And it is not selfish. A reed that gets kept is a reed that plays for longer.