It failed on a Thursday and she has been arranging the pieces ever since.
Fiona gave two years to it. Not a project she signed up for and nothing anybody appointed her to. Two people, a thing that had gone badly wrong between them, and Fiona in a position to be trusted by both, which is a position nobody volunteers for and everybody ends up in eventually.
Two years of careful work. Four conversations that went somewhere. One evening, about fourteen months in, when it looked like it was going to happen.
And then a Thursday, and something said that could not be taken back, and the whole thing came apart in about eleven minutes.
Both of them are worse off than before she started. That is the part she cannot get around. One of them will not now be in a building with the other, which was not true before, and Fiona was the one who got them close enough for the thing to be said.
She is thirty-nine.
And in the two years since, without ever announcing it to herself, she has arrived at a settled conclusion, which is not that she handled it badly. She has been over the handling and she was careful and she would do most of it the same.
The conclusion is that the wanting was the mistake.
That she had a hunger for something to be whole that was really about her, and it made her push, and pushing broke it, and the lesson she has drawn is to stop wanting things to be whole.
She has been much calmer since. People have commented on it.
And there is a thing that happens in her about four times a year, when she hears about somebody else's family or somebody else's church, where a door opens for about a second and something enormous comes up in her, and she shuts it, and she has become very quick at the shutting.
And you may have your own Thursday. Yours may have failed worse or better, and you may have drawn the same lesson, and you may have been calmer ever since.
He is not the one who wants peace. He is the peace.
Take this off before we go a step further, because you have carried it for two years and it was never yours.
You are not the one whose wanting was supposed to close that gap. You never were. Scripture does not say He wants peace or arranges peace, it says He is peace, and it is the Holy Spirit, not your hunger or your restraint, who closes anything. Set it down here in the doorway. It is heavy and it has been on you since that Thursday.
Now hear the sentence, and notice how strange the grammar is.
For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.Ephesians 2:14
He Himself is our peace.
Not He brings it. Not He advocates for it. He is it, which is a claim about a Person rather than about an outcome, and it changes what a failure means.
If peace is an outcome, then a failed attempt is evidence about whether the outcome is possible, and a sensible woman updates accordingly and stops wanting it.
If peace is a Person, then a failed attempt is evidence about a Thursday, and about eleven minutes, and about two people who were not ready, and it is not evidence about Him at all.
And that Person is standing in this. Right now, at thirty-nine, two years on. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who does the making one, and neither of them has ever been disproved by a bad conversation.
Now let me be careful, because there is a ditch on this side and I have no intention of putting you in it.
Nothing here says that Thursday was not real damage or that you should not have learned anything from it. You should. There are things about pace and pressure that you know now and did not know then, and God is not asking you to unlearn a single one.
And nothing here is telling you to go back to those two, or to try again, or to think that the door is yours to push at. It is not, and pushing at it is exactly what you have already found out about.
The point is only which lesson you drew, and Scripture puts the peace in a Person rather than in an outcome, and His Spirit is the one who has been at work in both those lives for two years without you.
Here is the tender part, and Scripture is gentle with it. The calm is not healing.
It is a woman who has shut a door and become extremely quick at shutting it, and quick is not the same as healed, and the thing that comes up four times a year is not a weakness that needs managing better. It is the wanting, and His Spirit is the one who put it in you, and He has not withdrawn it because a Thursday went badly.
So here is the turn, and it is one person and it is not those two.
Contact one person you have stopped contacting. His word says He Himself is our peace and His Spirit is the one who makes two one.
That is the whole of it. Not an attempt at anything. Not a second try, which is not yours to make and which nobody is asking for. One person you have gone quiet with, one message, about nothing much.
And hear this plainly, because it matters more than the rest: if reaching that person would not be safe for you, do not. Choose somebody else, or say their name to God and stop there. Nothing on this page is worth harm and God is not asking for any.
The wanting is not your error. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who put it in you, and neither of them has ever treated a Thursday as a verdict on a Person.
I am not going to tell you what becomes of those two, or whether anything does. That belongs entirely to God and He works in His own way and in His own timing, and I will not put a promise in His mouth so this page can end well. What I can tell you is what is already yours, and what is already yours is the wanting, given back to you as a gift rather than confiscated as a fault.
Four trees, further up. Not sixty.
Declare this over yourself
Say these standing in your own doorway, out loud. Nothing here is a task and nothing here has to be earned; it is already yours in Christ, and it was true on the Thursday and every day since. Scripture is what these lines stand on, His Spirit is the one who makes them live, and the outcome is His, answered in His own way and in His own timing.
- Lesson I drew on a Thursday, you were about pace and pressure and you turned into a verdict on wanting. In the name of Jesus I set you down in this doorway, because unity was the whole point and I still want it, and wanting it has cost me and I am not giving it up.
- Calm that everybody has commented on, you are a door shut quickly and you are not healing. Scripture says He Himself is our peace, which is a claim about a Person, and a Person is not disproved by eleven bad minutes.
- Lord, You are the peace and Your Spirit is the one who makes the two one, and You have been at work in both of them for two years without me. The wanting is Yours and You put it in me, and I am contacting one person this week.
Ephesians 2:14
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.