I Cannot Promise Anybody a Thursday

The wedding invitation has been on the shelf since March. It is in September. He has not replied.

That is not rudeness and it is not indecision. It is that he genuinely does not know, and he cannot write I do not know on a card with a tick box on it, and so it has sat there for five months quietly becoming a small daily accusation.

The condition has a name and the name does not help much, because what it actually does is this: some days he is fine, and some days he is not, and there is no reliable way to tell which is coming.

It is not progressive in an obvious way. It is not the sort of thing anybody sees. He looks perfectly well, which is its own small problem.

What it has done to his life is not dramatic and it is total.

He does not book things. He has become the man who says he will see how he is, and after about two years of that people stop asking, not unkindly, because there is only so long you can keep offering.

He does not take on anything with a date attached. He turned down something at work last year that he wanted, and gave a reason that was not the reason.

And he has stopped saying yes to anything more than about four days out, which means his life has quietly shrunk to a rolling four day window, and he never decided that, and nobody has noticed because there was no announcement.

The invitation is still on the shelf.

That is you, and the unpredictability has taken more from you than the illness has.

Three things I will not do

I am not going to suggest a cause or a cure. You have had that from people who meant well and it is exhausting, and I am not adding to the pile. None of that is mine to declare on my own. Scripture said it first in 2 Corinthians 12:9, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings it the distance.

I am not going to tell you to leave your consultant or your medication. Anybody who presents faith and treatment as rivals has understood neither.

And I am not going to tell you that this would have gone by now if you believed properly. There is no verse that prices healing by intensity of faith. The New Testament has Paul asking three times about something that stayed, and it also has Timothy with a recurring stomach complaint being told to take something for it rather than to believe harder.

You are not carrying this because your faith fell short. Scripture says my strength is made perfect in weakness, 2 Corinthians 12:9, and it is said to a man whose request had been declined, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present on the days you cannot predict as much as on the ones you can.

The verse where the answer was no

There is a passage in 2 Corinthians that is one of the most honest things in the whole New Testament, and it is usually quoted with the disappointing part removed.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.2 Corinthians 12:9

Read what is happening around it. Paul has something he calls a thorn in the flesh. He asks God three times to take it away.

The answer is no.

That is worth sitting with, because it means the man who wrote a third of the New Testament, who had healed other people, prayed a specific prayer for himself three times and did not get what he asked for. That is in the book. Nobody edited it out and nobody explained it away.

And the answer he did get is not a consolation. My grace is sufficient. Sufficient is a supply word: enough for the thing, adequate to what is required.

Notice that the sufficiency is about God's supply rather than about your management. He does not say you will find you have enough in you. He says His is enough for you.

You are not disqualified by a prayer that was not answered the way you asked. Scripture says my grace is sufficient for thee, 2 Corinthians 12:9, and it was spoken to a man on the third refusal rather than to a man being congratulated, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ancient no bearable in a house with an unopened invitation on the shelf.

The four day window

Here is what I would change first, and it is not the illness.

It is the rolling four day window, because you did not choose it and you have never examined it. Scripture put that in writing long before you read it here, in 2 Corinthians 12:9, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes written words land.

It arrived by an entirely reasonable logic. Every time you have said yes to something and then had to cancel, it cost you: a small humiliation, an explanation, somebody's disappointment, and a private conviction that you have become unreliable. And the way to never feel that is to never say yes. I have no authority to say that by myself. Scripture carries it in 2 Corinthians 12:9, and the Holy Spirit carries it to you.

So you stopped, and the shrinking happened one declined invitation at a time.

But look at what the arrangement actually secures. It does not prevent the bad days. It only prevents the cancellations. You are paying with your whole life to avoid an occasional awkward phone call. That is Scripture's sentence and not mine, 2 Corinthians 12:9, and it is the Holy Spirit and not this page who makes it true where you are.

And there is a version of this that costs far less: say yes, and tell people in advance what yes means. I would love to. There is a chance I will have to cancel and if I do it will be about my health and not about you. Said once, calmly, at the moment of accepting, it removes almost all of the awkwardness you have been organizing against.

You are not required to hand this condition your calendar. Scripture says this is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it, Psalm 118:24, and it is said about a day rather than about a guaranteed run of them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who hands back a September to somebody who wrote it off in March.

Looking well

Let me name the second thing, because it has cost you more than you admit.

You look fine. So every explanation you give is, in a small way, an argument. You are asking somebody to accept, on your word alone, a thing they cannot see, and after a while most people stop asking for the explanation and start filling in their own. Scripture stands under that in 2 Corinthians 12:9, and the Holy Spirit does the part no sentence can do.

That is why you gave a reason at work that was not the reason. Not dishonesty; fatigue. It is simply easier than the fifth conversation about a condition that does not show.

But the cost is that almost nobody in your life knows what is actually happening to you, which means you have an invisible illness and an invisible life, and you are managing both alone.

You are not obliged to prove yourself before you are believed. Scripture says man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart, 1 Samuel 16:7, and the outward appearance in your case is a face that looks perfectly well, and the Holy Spirit does not require evidence before He believes you.