I Stopped Ringing Her

They met over a trestle table at a joint thing in a hall, and Aine can remember the exact sandwich she was holding.

Bridie was from the other one. Four hundred yards down the same road, the near-identical name, the whole thing, and neither of them cared at all, and by the second year they were ringing each other on Sunday nights.

Eleven years of that.

Two holidays together. Aine was in the hospital when Bridie's second was born because Bridie's mother could not get there. Bridie sat with Aine's father the week before he died and Aine has never quite been able to say thank you for it properly, because there is no size of thank you that fits.

And then it went.

Not a row. Aine has been over it and there is no row, and she has asked herself directly, out loud, in the kitchen, and there is nothing.

It went by increments. A Sunday missed because somebody had people in. Then a fortnight. Then a text instead of a call, which is faster and is not the same thing, and then a text about a specific matter rather than a text for its own sake.

She could not tell you the year the calls stopped. She has tried and she cannot get closer than three possible ones.

She is fifty-seven.

They see each other. Twice a year, maybe, at a funeral or in the town, and it is warm and it is not awkward and they both say we must, and they mean it in the moment.

And what Aine sat with in February, on a hill, on her own, is that there are people in her congregation who have never met Bridie and who would be surprised that Aine had a friend from down there.

Not hostile. Surprised.

And Aine has never once corrected that impression, and she does not know when she started letting it stand.

And you may have a Bridie. And there may have been no day at all that you decided it.

Hosea puts the turning as the very first move

Take this off before we go a step further, because you have carried it years and it was never yours to carry alone.

You did not throw her away. You never did, and a drift is not a decision, though it ends in the same place and that is the hard part. Scripture has a people who wandered without ever choosing to, and the word that comes to them is not an analysis, and it is the Holy Spirit, not a full account of how it happened, who turns a person round. Set it down here on this path. It is heavy and you carried it up the hill in February.

Now hear it, and hear that it is an invitation rather than a verdict.

Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds.Hosea 6:1

Come, let us return.

There is no reconstruction of the wandering in that line. No date, no cause, no apportioning of how much of it was whose. The whole sentence is one movement and it faces forward.

And notice it is us. It is said by somebody inside it, to the others inside it, and not down onto them from anywhere.

Turning is available and it does not require the history first. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who does the turning in a person, and He has never once asked anybody to date the drift before He would start.

Now let me be careful here, because there are ditches on both sides and I have no intention of putting you in either.

Nothing here says your congregation drove this. It did not, and nobody there ever said a word to you about Bridie, and the people who would be surprised are not unkind people and Scripture would not have me make villains of them for a look on a face.

And nothing here says you should ring her tonight. That may be right and it may not, and it is not a thing to be done because a page suggested it, and if there is a reason it would not be safe or good then this article is not overruling that.

The point is only about the impression you have let stand, and Scripture puts the turning first and the explanation nowhere, and His Spirit is the one who is at work when somebody stops letting something stand.

Here is the tender part, and Scripture is gentle with it. You could not say thank you properly for the week before your father died.

That was never because there is no thank you big enough. It was because saying it would have opened the whole of it, and you have known that for years without putting it in words. His Spirit was in that room with the two of them and He has never once forgotten what she did in it.