Not Knowing Where I Am Going

The thing itself would take four minutes. That is the part that has begun to seem absurd to her.

Nine years of nothing between her and her cousin, and what she is considering is a card. Not a letter, not a phone call, not a conversation. A card, with about two sentences in it, about something ordinary that has nothing to do with any of it.

She bought it in January. It has been in the drawer in the hall since then.

And what she has been doing for seven months, with real seriousness and real effort, is looking for a reason to believe it will be received well. She has replayed things her aunt said at a funeral. She has read a message from four years ago about eleven times looking for warmth in it. Last week she asked a friend, in a roundabout way, what she thought the odds were, and her friend said something kind and meaningless.

She is not a fool and she knows exactly what she is doing. She is trying to buy an assurance, and there is nobody selling one.

And here is what she has never said out loud: she would post it tomorrow if somebody could promise her it would not be thrown away, and nobody can, and so it stays in the drawer.

There is no assurance and there is not going to be one

Let me say the hard half first and not dress it up, because the dressing up is what makes this kind of writing useless.

Nobody can tell you it will land. It might be thrown away. It might be read once, coldly, and put in a bin, and you would never know either way, and you would have spent something and got nothing visible back.

That is a genuine possibility and it is not small. Seven months in a drawer is a proportionate response to a real risk, and nobody who has never done it should be allowed to call it cowardice.

You are not being cowardly and the risk you have been weighing is accurate. That is not a kind reading somebody is offering you. Psalm 103:14 says He knows our frame and remembers we are dust, which covers seven months of a woman trying to find certainty where there is not any, and the Holy Spirit is the one raising it now to hand you something rather than to hurry you out of the hall.

And Abraham, in the great chapter about faith, is described in a way that people usually read too fast.

By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.Hebrews 11:8

Not knowing. That phrase is the whole entry. It is not there as an embarrassing detail that faith overcame, it is there as the definition. He went, and the not knowing went with him the entire way, and Scripture presents that as the model rather than as the beginner's version.

Nobody in that chapter was given the assurance you have been shopping for. Not one of them.

Going without knowing is not the same as going blind

You do know some things. You know it is a good card. You know the two sentences are kind and carry no hook in them. You know that whatever happens, you will not have made anything worse, because there is no worse available in a nine year silence.

What you do not know is the reception, and the reception has never been the part that was yours.

You are able to act without the guarantee, and the ability was given rather than developed, which is why looking for it inside yourself has not worked. Scripture puts it plainly in 2 Corinthians 5:7, where we walk by faith and not by sight, and the Holy Spirit is the one who supplies the walking rather than leaving a woman to generate certainty in a hallway.

Where your part ends

Say this plainly and do not soften it. Going first is never the same as walking into harm, and nothing here asks anybody into anything unsafe. If contact with your cousin would put you at risk, do not send it, and let no line on this page be used to push you. Get yourself safe, tell one real person who can actually do something, and hold this: safety comes before peace, every single time.

And this too: nothing here requires a conversation. A card is not a conversation, and if even the card is too much, the step at the bottom of this page can be something smaller that nobody ever receives at all.

For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name's sake lead me, and guide me.Psalm 31:3

Lead me and guide me. Both of those are requests for somebody else to know the way. You are being led by somebody who does know how this goes, and the knowing was never supposed to be transferred to you first. Psalm 31:3 puts the guiding in God rather than in your having read the situation correctly, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the leading, including on days when the destination is not visible.