I Have To Be Happy At The Shower

It is on Saturday and there are forty people coming.

There will be a moment. Somebody will say the name, out loud, with delight, in a room, and everybody will make the sound people make.

And she will be standing there holding a paper cup, and her face will have to do something, and she has been rehearsing what since Tuesday.

That is the whole of the problem and it is four days away.

Now I want to say the first thing loudly, because a woman in this position is usually being told the opposite by everybody around her.

She is not being small. She is not jealous. She is not a bad friend or a bad cousin or a bad sister.

She loved a word for a long time and it is gone, and it is being celebrated in front of her on Saturday, and she is going anyway and she is going to be kind. That is not pettiness. That is somebody doing a genuinely hard thing on purpose, and there is not one person in that room who will know what it costs her.

And the second thing, which is the actual subject: she is planning to do it entirely alone.

That is the part that will make Saturday harder than it needs to be, and it is the part that can be changed before then.

My grace is sufficient for thee

There is a sentence Paul is given after asking three times for something to be taken away, and it is not the answer he wanted.

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

You are being given enough rather than being spared, and 2 Corinthians 12:9 has never once promised that the hard thing would be removed. The written word answers three requests with sufficiency instead of rescue, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that reach a woman with a Saturday coming.

Notice what does not happen. The thing is not taken away. He asked three times and it stayed, and what he got instead was a sentence about it being enough.

And notice the shape of the second half. Strength made perfect in weakness. Not: strength arriving to replace weakness. The strength is at its most complete inside the weak place rather than instead of it.

Which means Saturday does not have to be survived by being strong. That is not the mechanism on offer, and it never was.

You have been trying to be strong enough for an afternoon, and Scripture puts the strength inside the weakness rather than in place of it. The Spirit of God is what makes sufficiency a real thing rather than a saying, and 2 Corinthians 12 leaves the thing exactly where it is.

Sufficient for the afternoon

Now the practical part, and it is about the size of what is needed.

Sufficient for thee. Not: sufficient for every occasion forever. There is a quantity in that word, and the quantity is what the day requires.

She does not need to be at peace about the name. She does not need to have finished grieving it by Saturday, and she will not have.

She needs to get through one afternoon.

That is all Saturday is asking, and the difference between those two is enormous, and she has been preparing for the wrong one since Tuesday.

You are able to have enough for one afternoon, and 2 Corinthians 12:9 has never once required the whole thing to be settled first. The written word supplies sufficiency for the occasion, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a room on a Saturday rather than in a resolution beforehand.

And here is the practical arrangement that makes it survivable, and it has one part.

Tell one person before you go.

Not the mother. Not anybody at the shower. One person, anywhere, who is not in that room: I loved that name and I am going to be fine and I am telling you so that somebody knows.

That is it. It takes about twenty seconds and it changes the whole day, because a thing carried entirely alone in a crowded room is a completely different weight from a thing that one person on earth knows about.

You are not required to do it unaided, and Scripture answers a man in his weakness rather than telling him to manage. 2 Corinthians 12 gives the sufficiency in company with God rather than in isolation, and the Spirit of God is with a woman who tells one person on Friday.

Say it once before you go

So here is the assignment on this row, and the timing matters.

Say the lost name out loud once, then put it away and say a new one.

Before Saturday. On Friday, or Saturday morning in a car outside.

Because a word that has never been said out loud will be said forty times on Saturday by other people, and the first time it comes out of a mouth should not be somebody else's mouth in a crowded room.

You are able to say it first, and 2 Corinthians 12:9 has never once left anybody to face a thing without something given in advance. The Holy Spirit is present in a car outside a hall on a Saturday morning, and the written word gives the sufficiency before the thorn is faced again.

And then a different one, straight afterward, because walking into that room with only a lost word in her mouth is much harder than walking in with a next one.

That is not a decision and nothing is settled by it. It is simply a mouth having something else in it.

You are permitted to walk in with a next word rather than a last one, and Scripture supplies what the day requires. 2 Corinthians 12 makes the strength perfect in the weak place, and the Holy Spirit is with a woman saying two names out loud before she goes.