The Life That Did Not Go That Way

He is thirty five and the thing that got him was a photograph on somebody else's phone, at a barbecue, of a house in a country he has never been to.

Not envy. He wants that clear, because he checked. He is not jealous of Dan, who is a good man and who worked for it. It was something much quieter and much worse, and it arrived on a Saturday afternoon holding a paper plate.

It was this: I am not going to have a different life than this one.

Sam has a job that is fine. A flat that is fine. He is well liked. He is not in trouble. He plays five a side. And somewhere around twenty three he had a sense of a version of himself that was coming, a person with more of everything in it, and that person never arrived, and nobody sent word, and at some point on a Saturday afternoon with a paper plate in his hand he understood that the not arriving is the news.

He stopped drinking a year ago and this is the thing that was underneath. Not trauma. Not a secret. A low, constant, unspectacular disappointment with a life that is completely fine, which has been there for years, and which used to be manageable from about seven o'clock on any given evening.

He has not told anybody, because how would you say it. Everything is fine. That is exactly the problem and there is no way to make it sound like one.

You know that afternoon. It might be a photograph, a school reunion, a birthday with a round number on it. Nothing is wrong. And something in you has quietly closed a door it used to leave open, and the closing is what you are actually carrying.

You are met by an answer that does not remove the ache, and you were never fobbed off with a smaller one. Paul asked three times for a thing to be taken away and was told my grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness; that is exactly what stands written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that answer usable by a man on a rooftop at thirty five.

My grace is sufficient for thee

Let me be careful, because this is a place where a page can do real damage by being encouraging in the wrong direction.

I am not going to tell you that a bigger life is coming, because I do not know that and it is not mine to promise. And I am not going to tell you to be grateful, because you already are grateful, and being told to feel a thing you are already feeling is one of the loneliest experiences available.

I am also not going to tell you that resolving this is what will keep you standing, because that would make your whole life depend on a piece of work nobody set you.

What I will do is show you the one place in Scripture where a first rate man asked for something reasonable and was told no.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.2 Corinthians 12:9

Three times Paul asked. Not for luxury. For a thorn to be taken out, something that was genuinely hindering him. And the answer was no, and the no came with a sentence attached, and the sentence is the whole point: my grace is sufficient for thee.

Sufficient. Enough. Not enough to fix it and not enough to replace it. Enough for it. God does not tell him the thorn is small or that a better arrangement is coming. He tells him that what is already being supplied is adequate to the actual situation.

You have enough for the life you actually have, and you were never being measured against the one that did not arrive. That is what stands written in 2 Corinthians 12, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes sufficient a real quantity to a man of thirty five with a fine job and a fine flat.

And then, my strength is made perfect in weakness. Perfect there means completed, brought to its full expression. It is not saying that weakness is good. It is saying that the place where a man runs out is the exact place where something else becomes visible, and that this is not a workaround, it is the design.

You are standing where His strength is completed, and you were never in the wrong place for it. Scripture puts the perfecting in the weakness itself, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that structural rather than consoling.

And look at what Paul does with it, because this is the part that changes a Saturday afternoon. He does not say fine, I will put up with it. He says most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities. He moves the thorn from the debit column to the credit column, not by pretending it is pleasant, but because of what it turns out to house. That is not positive thinking. That is a man reclassifying his own life on the strength of one sentence he was told.

You are able to reclassify what you are carrying, and you were never obliged to call it a loss just because it is not what you pictured. The written word has him glorying in the thing he asked three times to lose, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that shift honest rather than forced.

And the plain thing, said the way this site says it every time. A quiet, long running disappointment is worth telling somebody about, and a counselor is a completely reasonable person to tell. So is a doctor, so is a friend, so is a room where people say true things out loud. It is not dramatic enough to feel like it qualifies, and that is exactly why it goes unsaid for years. It qualifies.