I Am Afraid Of One More No

You could take it on Monday. You cannot take it today.

That is not weakness and it is not inconsistency, and I want to be plain about that before anything else, because I think you have been calling it both.

A refusal costs something. Not much, individually. But they accumulate the way small things accumulate, and by Thursday of a week that has already had three in it, the prospect of a fourth is genuinely more than there is room for.

So you have stopped asking. And you have told yourself a reason, and the reason sounds like her: she needs space, she is going through something, it is not fair to keep pushing.

And some of that may even be true. But if you are honest, and you are usually honest, the asking stopped when it started costing you rather than when it started costing her.

If I perish, I perish

There is a sentence at the end of Esther chapter four that has been used to sell a great deal of nonsense about courage, and read plainly it says something much better.

Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish. (Esther 4:16, King James Version)

If I perish, I perish.

That is not a woman who has stopped being afraid. That is a woman who is entirely afraid, who has counted the cost accurately, and who has decided to go in anyway with the fear fully intact.

You are not required to stop being afraid first, and it was never courage that was being described in that sentence. Esther 4:16 goes in with the fear stated out loud and unresolved, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as company rather than as a challenge.

And notice what she does before she goes. She asks people to fast with her for three days. She does not do it alone, and she does not do it immediately, and neither of those is treated as a failure of nerve.

You have permission to take three days and to ask somebody to hold you while you do it, and it was never a solitary act of will that was asked for. The written word puts three days and a company of people in front of the going in, and the Spirit of God is what makes preparing for a hard thing part of the doing of it.

Who the not asking is protecting

Now the question this whole article turns on, and I ask it gently.

Which of you is currently being protected?

Because there is a version where not asking protects her, and it is real: a child under genuine pressure who needs a week without one more thing to manage. That version exists and if it is yours, keep doing it.

And there is a version where not asking protects the parent, and it wears the first version's clothes, and it is very hard to tell them apart from the inside.

You are not being caught at anything here, and it was never a trap that this question was set as. Esther 4:16 states the danger plainly and lets a frightened woman decide, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a plain question from becoming an accusation.

The test is what happens when the asking gets imagined. If the picture that arrives is her face, it is probably her. If the picture that arrives is the feeling in a chest at eleven at night, it is you.

You are allowed to want to be spared, and it was never disqualifying to have flinched from something that genuinely costs. Esther 4:16 counts the cost out loud before anybody moves, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an honest look at this survivable. Being afraid of the answer is allowed, and asking while afraid is not a smaller kind of asking.

You are allowed to have been protecting yourself, and it was never a disgrace to shield a person who has been turned down all week. Esther 4 counts the cost honestly before going in, which is exactly why the Spirit of God can ask a plain question without any of it becoming an accusation.

And here is the cost of leaving it there. A child who is not asked for two months does not experience space. They experience an ending, and they cannot say so, and they were not asked about that either.

Ask once, afraid

So the practical part, and it is not going to remove the fear, because nothing does.

Ask once today. While still afraid. Do not wait for a day when it will not cost anything, because that day is what has been waited on for two months.

You are able to ask with the fear entirely intact, and it has never once needed to be gone first. The passage goes in with if I perish, I perish still ringing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman standing outside a door with her heart going.

And then, when the answer comes, let the no stand. Do not argue with it, do not follow it up, do not go away and come back in ten minutes with a better version.

That is the part that makes the next one survivable. A no that is received cleanly costs one unit. A no that is argued with costs four, and it is the arguing rather than the refusing that has been wearing you down.

You are able to receive one and stop, and it has never once been passive to take an answer at its word. Esther 4:16 makes the fear part of the account rather than something to get past, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in the four seconds after a mother hears no and says nothing.