Fourteen Months Of Asking For A Sign

The spring before last. She can date it because it was the week the magnolia went over.

The decision is not complicated to describe. Stay in the house, which is too big and which she has been in for thirty one years and which has the garden in it. Or take the bungalow, which is nearer everybody, which she has looked at twice, and which has a strip at the back that a person could do something with.

Neither one is wrong. That is what she has told four people and it is true.

She has asked for a sign about it every day for fourteen months.

She is not a woman who asks for signs about things. She wants that on the record and everybody who knows her would confirm it. She is practical to the point of being blunt, and if you asked her about somebody else in this position she would say, in about eleven words, that they should decide.

Here is what happened on her birthday in June.

Her granddaughter, who is direct, said: are you still thinking about the bungalow?

And she said: I am waiting to be shown.

And her granddaughter said, not unkindly, in the way of a person who has not yet learned to leave things: it has been over a year, Gran. Is that not a decision?

She said something about the garden and changed the subject and thought about it for the rest of the day and has thought about it since.

Because it has been fourteen months. And the bungalow with the strip at the back was on the market and then it was not, and there was another one in November and that one went too.

Waiting has not been neutral. Waiting has been choosing, every day, for fourteen months, and calling it something else.

I will instruct thee, and instruction is not a signal

Sit down on that bench a minute, because there is a verse people quote when they want a sign, and what it actually promises is a different thing entirely.

I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye.Psalm 32:8

Instruct. Teach. Guide.

Those are three words about a process that happens over time, in a person, through understanding. Not one of them describes a signal.

An instructed person is not somebody who has been sent a message. It is somebody who has been taught, and who therefore knows things, and who can then act on what they know without being told again in the moment.

And look at the next verse, which almost nobody quotes with it. Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding, whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle.

That is the contrast the psalm itself draws. Instruction, or a bridle. Understanding, or being hauled about by the mouth because you cannot be reasoned with.

Hear this on your own bench. You are not being left without guidance, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture promises instruction and teaching rather than a signal, and the Holy Spirit is the one who instructs, and He has been doing it in a practical woman for thirty one years and for fourteen months.

Now let me name what your granddaughter named, because she was right and she is twenty two and it took her nine words.

Fourteen months of not deciding has been deciding.

You have been in the big house for every one of those months. The garden has had two summers. Two bungalows have come and gone. Every day of waiting was a day of staying, and staying is one of the two options, and you have been quietly taking it while believing you had not chosen, and the written word never called that neutral, and the Holy Spirit has not been holding either door shut.

That is not deceit and nobody is accusing you. It is the commonest thing in the world and it is why the default option in any decision wins nine times out of ten.

Hear this too, and let it settle before the autumn. You have not been failing to hear, and Scripture is what says so. What is written promises to instruct and teach and never once promises a signal, and the Spirit of God does not withhold a sign from a woman who is waiting, because a sign was never the currency He was going to pay in.

And let me say what this is not, because this category is easy to get wrong.

Nobody is telling you to move. That is not this article's business and it is not mine, and there are excellent reasons for staying and you could give me nine of them, and the garden is one and it is real.

The thing being handed back is the choosing. You are an instructed woman, taught by the written word and by the Holy Spirit over thirty one years, with two good options and a mind you have always known, and you are allowed to pick one on purpose.