She keeps two calendars, and only one of them is on her phone.
The other one is in Priya's head and has been for six years, and it consists entirely of making sure that Rachel and Naomi are never in the same place at the same time as her.
They were all three of them close. That is what makes it hard to explain to anybody who came later. There are photographs of the three of them on a beach in a year Priya can name, and something happened between the other two that Priya was not there for, and both of them told her about it separately and neither of them has ever asked her to choose.
That is important and she wants it said. Nobody asked her to choose. Both of them would say, honestly, that they do not expect her to.
They simply cannot be in a room, and so Priya has spent six years running two friendships in parallel.
Two birthdays. Two versions of her weekend when she is asked about it. A whole private administration of who knows what, which she has become so good at that she does it without effort now and only notices when she gets it wrong, which she has twice.
And in the spring she was making a cake for one of them and realized she could not remember whose birthday it was.
She stood there with the bowl.
Not because she does not love them. She loves them both and that is the entire problem, and it is why she has never done the sensible thing, which everybody who knows about it says is to let one of them go.
She is thirty-four. She has kept both, and it has worked, and she is more tired than anybody in her life understands.
And the thing she has never said out loud is that she does not miss either of them, particularly, because she sees both of them plenty. What she misses is the three of them. And there is no version of her double administration that gets her that back.
And you may have your own two calendars. Yours may be family rather than friends, and you may be extremely good at it by now, and it may be costing you something nobody can see.
One thing is named as the binder and it is not your management
Take this off before we go a step further, because you have carried it for six years and it was never yours.
You are not what is holding those two friendships together. You never were. Scripture names one thing that binds anything into unity and it is not administration, and it is the Holy Spirit, not your calendar, who does any actual joining. Set it down here with the bowl. It is heavy, and six years of it is a great deal to carry quietly.
Now hear the sentence, and hear what it puts on top.
And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.Colossians 3:14
Binds them all together.
That is written at the end of a list of good things: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with each other, forgiving. All of which you have been doing, expertly, for six years, in two directions at once, and His Spirit has been in every one of them.
And the sentence says that none of those is the binder. Love is, and love is named as a separate thing put on over the top of all of them, and the binding is what love does rather than what you arrange.
Which means your two calendars are not a failure of the list. You have done the list. What you cannot do is the binding, and Scripture never once asked you to.
You are able to love both of them today without holding anything together. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who binds, and He has never once handed that job to a woman with a cake mix.
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 you should force a room. Do not. Putting those two in a room to see what happens is not reconciliation, it is an experiment with other people in it, and it is not yours to run.
And nothing here says the six years were wasted or that you should have let one go. Everybody who told you that was giving you the cheap answer, and you were right not to take it, and God is not scornful of a woman who would not drop a friend.
The point is only that keeping both and binding both are different jobs, and Scripture assigns one of them to love and does not assign it to you. His Spirit is the one who has been doing the second job in both those houses for six years without your calendar.
Here is the tender part, and Scripture is gentle with it. What you actually miss is not being carried by either of them.
It is the three of you, and that is not something a person can arrange back into existence by being good at administration, and you have been trying to hold the door open for something that is not in your gift. His Spirit is the one who does that, in His own way, and He is not annoyed that you have been standing there.
So here is the turn, and it is one person and it is not a room.
Contact one person you have stopped contacting. His word gives you the loving and His Spirit does the binding.
That is the whole of it. Not a plan for the three of you. Not a conversation with either of them about the other, which is the thing you have declined to do for six years and were right to decline. One person, 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.
You are able to love without being the binder, starting today. His word puts love over the top of the whole list and says the binding is what love does, and His Spirit is the one doing it, and neither of them ever gave you two calendars.
I am not going to tell you whether those two are ever in a room, or when, or what it would take. 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 smaller and better half of that arrangement.
Send the message. He is doing the rest.
Declare this over yourself
Say these standing in your own kitchen, out loud. Nothing here is a task and nothing here has to be earned; it is already yours in Christ, and it was true through all six years. 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.
- Two calendars, you have kept two friendships alive and you have never once been the thing that binds them. In the name of Jesus I set you down with this bowl, because unity was the whole point and I still want it, and wanting it has cost me and I am not giving it up.
- Idea that the sensible thing is to let one of them go, you are the cheap answer and everybody who offered it meant well. Scripture puts love over the top of the whole list and says the binding is what love does, and I have been doing the list for six years.
- Lord, You are the one who binds and Your Spirit is the one who has been in both those houses without my calendar. The loving is my size, and I am contacting one person this week.
Colossians 3:14
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.