Two years of trying, and then a Tuesday.
You had done everything. Walks, timing, the right questions, the deliberately open ones, the ones about somebody else designed to get round to her. You had read things. You had genuinely worked at it, in the way somebody works at a thing that matters more than almost anything else.
And then one week you stopped. Not as a strategy. You were tired and something else was going on and you went out with her because it was Tuesday and you had nothing left to attempt.
And she talked for twenty five minutes.
And you have not known what to do with that ever since, because the obvious lesson is a trap, and I think you can feel the trap without being able to name it.
As a child that is weaned of his mother
There is a psalm three verses long that describes a state most people never get to, and it is careful about how it got there.
Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child. (Psalm 131:2, King James Version)
As a child that is weaned of his mother.
That image is precise and it is worth slowing down for. A weaned child is not a child who has stopped loving its mother, and it is not a child who wants her less. It is a child who is with her without needing to get anything from her.
You are being shown company without a requirement in it, and it was never a description of caring less about anybody. Psalm 131:2 uses a weaned child rather than a distant one, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as arrival rather than as detachment.
And notice the verb. I have behaved and quieted myself. It is done rather than received, which means it is available, and it is also not described as easy, because weaning never is.
You have something you can actually quiet, and it was never a state that only descends on some people. The written word makes the quieting an action a person takes, and the Spirit of God is what keeps that from being either automatic or impossible.
The trap, said out loud
Now the trap, because it has been felt already and I would like to name it so that it stops being able to work.
The obvious lesson is: stop trying, and she will talk.
And the moment that becomes the lesson, stopping is a method, and a method has a purpose, and a purpose is a form of trying. So the very sentence that describes what happened destroys the condition that made it happen, and it is possible to feel that happening while reading it, which is why that Tuesday has been unsettling ever since.
A thing that only arrives when nobody is reaching for it cannot be reached for, and that is not a trick, it is the shape of it.
You are not being handed a technique, and it was never a method that produced those twenty five minutes. Psalm 131 describes a quieted soul rather than a successful one, which is exactly why the Spirit of God will not let stopping become a strategy.
And here is the thing that saves this from being useless. The choice is not between trying and using a clever new kind of trying. It is between wanting a thing from the walk and wanting the walk.
Those are genuinely different, and the second one is available, and it is not a disguised version of the first.
Want the walk
So the practical part, and it is a matter of what the twenty minutes is for.
Walk twenty minutes wanting nothing from it, and notice when the wanting comes back.
You are able to want the walk itself, and it has never once been the same thing as pretending not to want anything else. The passage describes a soul quieted by an action rather than an outcome, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman going out for the walk rather than for what is in it.
And the noticing is the whole practice. The wanting will come back, usually around minute eleven, and it will arrive as a small lean, and when you notice it, do not scold yourself. Just say: I want the walk, and keep walking.
That is not a technique because it does not have an outcome attached. You will do it on the walks where nothing is said as well, and there will be a lot of those, and they will not be failures.
And here is what I am not going to say, and I want to be clear that I am not saying it: I am not telling you she talks again. She may not. That Tuesday may have been a Tuesday, and this article does not have a method in it for getting another one.
You are able to go out with no outcome in your hands, and it has never once required a result to have been the right way to go. Psalm 131:2 describes a weaned child who is still with its mother, and the Spirit of God is the one who is out on a road with a woman wanting nothing from the road.
So here is what I believe is going out over a woman holding one Tuesday she cannot reproduce.
You are not somebody who was doing it wrong for two years, and you were never going to be able to make that happen. I am not promising you another Tuesday. Psalm 131:2 says I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother, and describes company without a requirement in it, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my saying so who keeps stopping from turning into a strategy.
And this, which is the word I came with:
You have permission to want the walk, and wanting it has never once been a disguised way of wanting something else. The written word makes the quieting something a person does and attaches no outcome to it at all, and the Spirit of God is the one who is beside a woman walking for the walk.
Twenty minutes. Want the walk.
Declare this over yourself
- Trap in the obvious lesson from that Tuesday, you are not catching me and I can see you now. Psalm 131:2 says surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother, so by the Holy Spirit I walk twenty minutes wanting the walk in the name of Jesus.
- Two years of trying that I have started to call a mistake, you were never wrong and you were never wasted. The written word describes a quieted soul without offering anybody a route to it, and by the Holy Spirit I am done reaching for a thing that cannot be reached for.
- Father, You put a weaned child beside its mother and called that quiet. Your word in Psalm 131 makes the quieting an action and attaches no outcome to it, so by Your Spirit I go out today for the walk and for nothing in it.
Psalm 131:2
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