One More Than I Need

Twelve coming. She cooks for thirteen. She has done it every time for seven years.

It is not a grand gesture and nobody has ever noticed, because it is one extra portion in a pot that already feeds a crowd and nobody counts. Her sister has commented twice on the amount of food in that house and both times she said something about it being better to have too much.

There is no plate laid. There is no chair. There is nothing anybody in that family could point at.

There is one extra portion, in the pot, every single time.

She started doing it about six months after he stopped coming, and she cannot remember deciding to. She remembers standing in the kitchen with a bag of rice and putting in a bit more than she needed, and that is all she remembers.

And here is what she has never said out loud to anybody, including in prayer, which is the part that has begun to bother her: she does not know whether she is hoping or whether she is just a woman who has cooked the same amount for seven years.

Name what one extra portion is

Let me put words on it, because nobody has, including you.

It is a place kept in a form that cannot be seen. There is no chair to be noticed, no plate to be counted, no thing anybody could photograph and no thing that could ever be reported back to him.

Which means it has never functioned as pressure. Not once in seven years. He does not know, nobody has told him, and it has never been used at a family gathering to make a point.

That is the most private possible way to keep something open, and you invented it standing at a stove with a bag of rice.

You have been holding something open in a form that costs him nothing at all, and seven years of that is generosity rather than a habit you cannot break. Nobody is being kind to you here. Hebrews 6:10 says God is not unjust to forget your work and the love you have shown, which covers seven years of an extra measure, and the Holy Spirit is the one raising it now to name it rather than to ask you to explain anything.

Whether it is hope does not have to be settled today

Here is the question that has begun to bother you, and it is worth taking seriously rather than dismissing: is this hope, or is it just what your hands do now.

The honest answer is that you probably cannot tell, and neither can anybody else, and the good news underneath that is that it does not need deciding.

A thing does not have to be correctly labeled in order to be received. God has never once required a person to sort out the motive underneath an act before He would accept it.

You are not required to know what it is, and no part of it is invalidated by your uncertainty. Scripture puts it plainly in Psalm 139:23, where searching a heart is handed to God rather than performed by the person, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does that sorting rather than leaving a woman at a stove doing it herself.

Where your part ends

Say this plainly. Keeping a place open is never the same as owing somebody access, and nothing here asks anybody to keep anything open into harm. If there is a reason he should not be at that table, the pot can stay full and the door can stay shut, and there is no contradiction in that at all. Get whoever is at risk safe, tell one real person who can actually do something, and hold this: safety comes before peace, every single time.

And this too, plainly. Nothing here says he is coming. Nobody knows that and any page that told you otherwise would be lying to a woman who has cooked for thirteen more than a hundred times.

They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.Psalm 126:5

Read what the sower is holding. Precious seed. Not wasted seed, not foolish seed. And read where the harvest sits: with God, in a season the verse does not name, and attached to the sowing rather than to a particular field coming good.

You are sowing rather than losing, and Scripture calls what is in your hands precious rather than sentimental. Psalm 126:5 puts the reaping in God's hands and the seed in yours, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that steady a woman who has stopped being able to name what she is doing.