The text came in at 6:40 in the evening while she was standing in line for a sandwich.
my dad died this morning
She read it twice standing in that line. Then she stepped out of the line and went outside and stood against the wall of the building with her phone in both hands.
Her own father died in October. It is June.
And what happened in her chest in the four seconds after she read that text is a thing she has told nobody, because she cannot say it out loud without sounding like the worst person alive.
What happened was: I cannot do this.
Not I am so sorry. Not I have to get to her. Those came second and third and they were real. But the first thing, the immediate thing, the thing underneath, was a kind of panic, because she knows exactly what her friend has walked into, she knows the shape of the room and the smell of the flowers and the way the phone will not stop and then will stop completely, and she has not got out of it herself yet, and she is being asked to go back in.
She typed four different replies and deleted all of them.
Then she wrote, I'm coming, and she went.
She has been sitting on the floor of that kitchen for two hours now with her back against the cabinets. Her friend is across from her. Neither of them has said very much. And the whole time there is a running commentary in her head telling her she is doing this badly, that a person eight months out has no business being anybody's comfort, that she is a fraud sitting on a linoleum floor.
If anybody has stepped out of a line and stood against a wall like that, stay with me. There is a sentence in the second letter to Corinth that takes the whole weight off, and it does it without asking her to be finished first.
Paul writes it in the present tense on purpose
Here is the sentence, and the grammar of it is the whole point.
Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.2 Corinthians 1:3-4
Comforteth. Present tense. Ongoing. Not comforted, past and finished and filed. God is doing it, now, while the comforting is being handed on.
And look at the last clause, because this is the part that lifts a nineteen year old off a kitchen floor. By the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted. Not the comfort we have finished receiving. Not the comfort we have processed and understood and can now dispense from a position of strength. The comfort we ourselves are being comforted with, right now, in the middle of it.
Paul is describing a person passing along something that is still arriving in their own hands.
You are handing on comfort that is still coming to you, and you have been receiving it since October whether or not you could feel it arriving. 2 Corinthians 1:4 is the written word putting the comforting in the present tense on both ends of the sentence, and the Spirit who breathed it is on that linoleum floor with two girls who are not saying very much.
And notice who is called what. God is named the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. That is a title, and it belongs to Him and to nobody else. Nowhere in that passage is a comforter required to be the source. The source is named and it is not her.
You are a channel on that kitchen floor and you were never asked to be the well, and you were not the well in October either. 2 Corinthians 1:3 hands the title God of all comfort to God alone, and the Holy Spirit does not require an empty person to become full before He will move through them.
Being unfinished is not the disqualification you think it is
Now let me deal with the running commentary directly, because it has been going for two hours and it is loud.
It says a person eight months out has no business being anybody's comfort. It says she is a fraud on a linoleum floor. It says she should have said she could not come.
That voice is not the Holy Spirit and it never was.
Think about what her friend actually needs tonight. She does not need an expert. She does not need somebody with conclusions. The last thing on this earth that girl needs in that kitchen is a person who has grief worked out and is prepared to explain what she will find on the far side of it.
What she needs is somebody in the room who is not frightened of her. And there is exactly one person in that whole university who is not frightened of her tonight, and it is the girl on the floor across from her, and the reason she is not frightened is the same reason she panicked outside the sandwich place. She knows the shape of the room.
The very thing being called a disqualification is the qualification. It was always the qualification.
You are able to sit in that kitchen without flinching because of October, and you were not sent in there to know anything. 2 Corinthians 1:4 says the comfort is handed on by the ones being comforted in trouble of their own, and the Spirit of God has never once required a person to finish before He would use them.
Nothing is being asked of you tonight that you do not already have
Now let me take the last thing off, because I think she is bracing for something that is not coming.
She is waiting to be asked a question she cannot answer. Does it stop. How long. Where is he. Why. She is sitting on that floor with her whole body ready for the question and she has decided in advance that when it comes she will have failed.
Here is the thing about that. If the question comes, she is allowed to say, I do not know.
That is not a failure of comfort. That is comfort. Her friend has had eleven people today reach for something to say. What she has not had is one person say plainly, I do not know, and stay sitting there afterward.
And she will not be asked most of it. Most of what happens on a kitchen floor at nine at night is two people not talking, and one of them getting up at some point to fill the kettle, and neither of them mentioning it.
You have everything required for that floor already in your hands, and you had it before you typed the words I am coming. 2 Peter 1:3 says His divine power has given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, and the Holy Spirit does not send anybody into a room short of what the room needs.
So here is where this leaves a girl on a linoleum floor with her back against the cabinets.
She has not been sent in there to supply anything. She was never the supply.
You are carrying comfort into that kitchen that is still being poured into you, and you were being comforted through every week since October when it did not feel like anything. 2 Corinthians 1:4 puts the giving and the receiving in the same present tense in the same sentence, and the Spirit who breathed that line does not wait for a person to be finished before He fills their hands.
And here is the heavier one, the one that has been running all evening. You have carried a charge that was never true, that a girl eight months out is a fraud for sitting with somebody in the first week. Nothing in the written word makes comfort the property of the recovered, 2 Corinthians 1:3 names God alone as the God of all comfort and asks nobody else to be a source, and the Holy Spirit is not the voice that has been calling her a fake on a kitchen floor.
Set it down. It is not hers and it never was.
I will not say tonight goes well or that either of them sleeps. Comfort is His to give, in His own way and in His timing, and a hard night on that floor is not a report card on anybody's faith.
But there are two girls in that kitchen and the Father of mercies is in the room, and neither of them has to be further along than she is.
If any of this ever turns dangerous for her, or for you, and staying safe genuinely comes into question, call or text a crisis line where you live, 988 in the United States, and tell a doctor or a counselor the truth. Getting a real human being physically near either of you is not a failure of faith.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, on the stairs, before you go back in. The authority to speak to what has been running in your head all evening was given to you in Christ, and it does not rise or fall with how well you think you are doing tonight. Scripture is the ground under every line and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it. And whatever He does in that kitchen afterward is His to decide, in His own way and His own timing.
- Voice that says I have nothing to give her, you are not an assessment and you never had the file. 2 Corinthians 1:4 has comfort handed on by people who are still being comforted themselves, and I stop auditing myself on a kitchen floor.
- Fear of the question I cannot answer, get out in the name of Jesus. Scripture never once makes I do not know a failure of comfort, and the Comforter is the one who is actually holding that room, not me.
- Lord, You are the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, as 2 Corinthians 1:3 says. You are comforting me right now, tonight, on this floor, and I am handing on what is still arriving in my own hands.
2 Corinthians 1:3-4
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