Three Times I Promised Her

The first time she was seven and it was a swimming gala and he told her he was on his way.

The second time she was nine and it was the same gala, a different year, and he told her he was on his way, and she believed him, because she was nine.

The third time she was eleven and she did not ask him to come, and he offered, and he said he would definitely be there, and she said okay in a voice he can still hear, and that voice is the part that finishes him. Not the missing it. The voice. Eleven years old and already handling him.

Kaleo is fifty three. His daughter is twenty six and a teacher and they talk every week and she brings the little one round on Sundays. She has never once mentioned any of the three. Not in a row, not in an argument, not sideways, not ever.

He stopped drinking nine years ago. Everything got better. That is true and he says it to people.

And when she is in his kitchen on a Sunday with her daughter on her hip, laughing at something, what is running underneath in him is an eleven year old girl saying okay in a voice with nothing left in it.

You know that thing. It might be a school gala, a birthday, a hospital appointment, a promise about next time. It happened more than once, and it is the last one you cannot get past, because in the last one you can hear that they had stopped expecting anything.

You have transgressions blotted out by God for His own sake, and you were never the reason He does it. Isaiah says I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins, and the reason is stated to be His; that is exactly what stands written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a live fact for a man standing in his own kitchen on a Sunday.

For mine own sake

Let me name this carefully, and let me say what this article is not going to do.

It is not going to tell you to bring it up with her. She may not want it brought up. She may have put it somewhere years ago and built a good life over the top of it, and a man arriving with a confession can be a weight handed to somebody who was not carrying it that morning. That is a decision for you and for people who know her, not for a page. Nothing here depends on it.

And it is not going to tell you the three times were not that bad. They were what they were. You know what they were.

Here is the verse.

I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.Isaiah 43:25

I, even I. The emphasis is doubled at the front of the sentence, which in Hebrew is how you insist. He is stressing who is doing this before He says what is being done. Not you. Not your nine years. Him.

You have somebody else doing the blotting, and you were never the agent in that sentence. That is what stands written in Isaiah 43, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that emphasis land on a man who has been trying to earn something back for nine years.

And for mine own sake. This is the one to sit down with. He does not say for your sake, and He does not say because you have been better lately. He says He does it for His own. Which means the whole thing rests on His character and His name, and your record is not the load bearing wall. If it were, it would fall down, and it would fall down at the third time.

You are standing on His reason rather than yours, and you were never being asked to supply one. Scripture puts the motive on God's side of the sentence, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a man from putting himself back in as the cause.

And will not remember. That is not amnesia; God is not capable of forgetting anything. It is a covenant phrase and it means will not bring it up, will not hold it against, will not raise it as a matter between us. It is a decision about what will be spoken of, made by the party who was wronged.

You are dealing with somebody who has decided not to raise it, and you were never in a relationship where it would be brought back up. The written word uses the language of a decision rather than a lapse of memory, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that reliable on a Sunday in a kitchen.

And here is what I would say to you as a man in your fifties with a daughter who comes round on Sundays. The most useful thing available to you now is not settling the past, it is being present at the ordinary things. Not the big occasions, where a man tries hardest and is most watched. The ordinary ones: the pickup, the Tuesday, the thing that does not matter. That is where a father gets rebuilt, and it is entirely available to you this week.

And the plain thing, which we say every time. Nine years of carrying an eleven year old's voice is worth telling somebody. A counselor, a friend, a room where people say true things out loud. That is God's kindness with a face on it and there is no age at which it becomes too late.