He still comes at Christmas and he still comes if one of the children is in something, and he is perfectly pleasant to everybody in that building, and he has not been on an ordinary Sunday in about two years.
It was not a row. That is the part that leaves her nowhere to stand.
There was a stretch where he was tired a lot of Sundays, and then a stretch where there was always something on, and somewhere in the middle of that it stopped being a run of individual weeks and became a fact, and neither of them has ever named the day it changed because there was no day.
He does not stop her going. He is not sarcastic about it. When their daughter asked him something at the table last year he gave an answer that was careful and kind and gave nothing away at all, and she has thought about that answer for a very long time since.
She prays for him. Every day, and she has never told him that either.
And here is the thing she cannot say to anybody, because it sounds ungrateful when her husband is a good man who does the school run and makes her laugh: she is bereaved, and there has been no death, and nobody has announced anything, so there is nothing to be bereaved about.
That is you, and the silence is the thing you are actually carrying.
Three things I am not going to do
I am not going to give you a technique for him.
There is a whole industry of advice aimed at women in your position and most of it is a method dressed as spirituality: say this, do not say that, live in such a way that he is won. Some of it quotes Scripture at you. What it produces is a wife who is managing her own husband as a project, and a marriage in which one person is a soul to be worked on, and I am not going to hand you that.
I am not going to promise you an outcome. He is a grown man with his own account before God and his own road, and nothing on this page and nothing in any song will be aimed at moving his will, because love does not acquire authority over a person by being love.
And I am not going to tell you what happened. You do not know and neither do I. Two years of quiet is not the same as a decision, and a man can be a long way further in than his wife can see, or a long way further out, and there is no way to establish which from a kitchen.
What I will do is stay with you, because you are the one who has been carrying an unannounced loss with nowhere to put it.
You are seen in this, at the exact point where nobody is looking. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that near enough to lean on in a kitchen where nothing has technically happened.
The verse says pour out, and it says at all times
There is a line in Psalm 62 that has three parts and every one of them is doing work.
Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us.Psalm 62:8
At all times. Not when you can see the shape of it. Not once the situation resolves into something namable. At all times includes a season with no event in it, which is exactly the season you are in. Scripture put that in writing long before you read it here, in Psalm 62:8, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes written words land.
Pour out your heart before him. That is not a tidy verb. It assumes something that has to come out in a rush rather than be presented in order, and it does not ask for the contents to be sorted first, which matters when what you are carrying does not have a name. I have no authority to say that by myself. Scripture carries it in Psalm 62:8, and the Holy Spirit carries it to you.
God is a refuge for us. Not a solution. A refuge is somewhere you go while something is still going on.
You are allowed to bring this to God without being able to say what it is. Scripture says pour out your heart before him, Psalm 62:8, and it puts no requirement anywhere that the heart be legible first, and the Holy Spirit is the one who receives a thing that has not got a name yet.
The grief with no announcement
Here is what I most want to name, because I do not think anybody has, and it is not about him at all.
You are grieving, and the grief has been ruled out of order on a technicality. That is Scripture's sentence and not mine, Psalm 62:8, and it is the Holy Spirit and not this page who makes it true where you are.
Because nothing was announced, there was no moment. Because there was no moment, there is no anniversary, no conversation, no acknowledgement from anybody. Because he is kind and present and a good father, raising it feels like a complaint about a man who has done nothing wrong.
So you have been mourning something for two years in a house where officially nothing has occurred. Scripture stands under that in Psalm 62:8, and the Holy Spirit does the part no sentence can do.
That is real. It is not disloyalty and it is not ingratitude and it is not you making a problem out of nothing. There was a thing the two of you shared, at the center of everything, and it is not currently shared, and a person is allowed to feel the size of that.
You are allowed to grieve something nobody has announced. Scripture keeps whole books of lament for losses that had no ceremony attached, Lamentations 3:19-20, and the Holy Spirit does not require an event before He will treat a loss as one.
What to do with the praying
You pray for him every day and you have never told him. I am not going to tell you to tell him, because I do not know your marriage and that is not a stranger's call. It is written, in Psalm 62:8, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes what is written off a page and into a life.
But I would change one thing about the praying, and it is small.
At the moment I suspect almost all of it is aimed at his position: that he would come back, that something would shift, that a conversation would happen. That is an entirely reasonable prayer and there is nothing wrong with it.
Add one that is not about his position. Pray for him. The man. The week he is having, the thing at work, the way his back has been. Pray for the person rather than the outcome.
Two reasons. The first is that it will do something in you, because it is very hard to hold somebody as a project and as a person at the same time, and the praying is where that gets decided.
The second is that God is already with him. Wherever he actually is, at whatever distance, the Holy Spirit is not waiting outside the situation for permission.
You are not the only one working on this, and you were never the mechanism. Scripture says whither shall I go from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence, Psalm 139:7, and the Holy Spirit named there is not divided between the two of you and has never had to choose.
Nothing on this page changes where your husband is, and I would not insult you by writing a sentence that sounded like it might.
What can change is that the grief stops being illegitimate.
You have been ruling it out for two years because nothing was announced, and so it has been running underground, unnamed, in a house where you are also being a good wife to a good man. And a grief with nowhere to go does not shrink. It goes quiet and gets heavier. Scripture settles that in Psalm 62:8, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it rather than these words.
Give it somewhere. Say it to God in the actual words, without the disclaimers about him being a good man, which are true and which you do not have to say to the One who already knows. And tell one person outside the house, not to get advice about him and not to start a prayer campaign, but so that one other human being knows what you have been carrying.
You are held in this, and so is he. Scripture says trust in him at all times, pour out your heart before him, God is a refuge for us, Psalm 62:8, and the Holy Spirit has been in that kitchen through every Sunday of the two years.
And bless him tonight, by name, out loud. Not a prayer that moves him. A blessing that leaves him a person and not a project.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud with your hand on the name. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the standing to speak was given to you and two quiet years have not withdrawn it. Scripture carries every line here and the Holy Spirit brings them the distance. Nothing here commands another person's will, because that was never ours; He answers in His own way and the outcome is His, and however He answers, none of it is a verdict on you or on your marriage.
- Sentence he has never said, you are a silence and not an announcement, and I am not living in a room you have not entered. The Word of God says pour out your heart before Him at all times, and in the name of Jesus I stop ruling my own grief out of order on a technicality.
- Idea that I may not mourn this because he is a good man and nothing has happened, get out of this kitchen. Scripture keeps whole chapters of lament for losses with no ceremony, Lamentations 3:19-20, and the Holy Spirit has never once required an event before He would call something a loss.
- Lord, You are a refuge rather than a solution, and You are with him this week exactly as strongly as You are in this kitchen. I am writing his name down and blessing him out loud, and I am praying for the man and not only for the outcome.
Psalm 62:8
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