Yolanda has told eleven people and she is sitting at a bus stop on Hensford Road wondering why none of it has gone in.
The news is genuinely good. The appeal on her sister's residency went through. Three years of forms, two solicitors, a hearing that got moved twice, and a period in the middle where the family had all quietly stopped saying it would be fine.
And on Tuesday it came, and it was fine.
She has told her mother, her mother's neighbor, two of her cousins, a woman at work, the woman at work's husband who happened to be on the phone, her supervisor, a friend from school, two people at church and the man in the shop who has been asking after it for a year.
Every single one of them was pleased. Some of them cried. The man in the shop shook her hand with both of his.
And Yolanda is sitting at a bus stop in the sun on Saturday morning and something inside her has not moved at all.
She is not depressed and she is not ungrateful and she has thought about both of those. It is more specific than that. It is that the good thing has been announced eleven times and has still not been delivered to the part of her that spent three years braced.
Her neighbor Ivy sat down next to her, because Ivy is seventy and sits where she likes.
Ivy said, "You all right?"
Yolanda said she was fine, and then, because Ivy has a face that gets things out of people, she said the actual thing.
Ivy thought about it for a bit. And then she said, and Yolanda has repeated this to about six people since: "Have you told yourself?"
Yolanda said what.
And Ivy said: "You've told everybody in this postcode. Have you sat down and told your own self? Out loud?"
You may be in the same position. Something good has happened and you have communicated it efficiently and everybody knows and there is a part of you standing slightly to one side of the whole thing, unconvinced, still braced, waiting for the other letter. And nobody has ever suggested to you that telling yourself is a real move, and an old one.
The Psalm Where A Man Talks To Himself Out Loud
There is a psalm that opens with something people read straight past because it looks like a figure of speech, and it is not one.
"Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits."Psalm 103:1-2
He is not addressing God in those two lines. Read them again. He is addressing his own soul. He says O my soul, twice, and gives it an instruction.
That is a man standing somewhere talking to the inside of himself out loud, and telling it to catch up.
You have a part of you that can be spoken to, and Scripture speaks to it directly rather than waiting for it to feel differently. Psalm 103 opens by addressing the interior rather than the Almighty, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an ancient technique and sits it down at a bus stop on a Saturday morning.
And look at the second instruction, because it names the exact problem. Forget not all His benefits. That is not written to somebody who has forgotten the facts. It is written to somebody who knows the facts and has not connected them, which is precisely the state of a woman who has announced her good news eleven times and still has not received it herself.
You are not being asked to feel something, you are being handed something to say. That is what the written word does with a soul that has not caught up, and it is the Spirit of God who makes a sentence go somewhere that eleven conversations did not reach.
Telling Yourself Is Not Pretending
Now the honest part, because a certain kind of person will hear all this as positive self talk with a hat on.
It is not that. Positive self talk asks you to say something you do not know to be true in the hope that saying it will make it true. This is the exact opposite. This is saying something that is already true to a part of you that has not been told yet.
The appeal went through. That is a fact. It is on paper. The bracing is what needs the news, and the bracing is not going to be argued into it, because bracing does not listen to arguments, it listens to repetition and to a voice.
That is why it goes out loud. A thing said out loud has to travel through the ear, which means it arrives the same way news from another person arrives, which is exactly the delivery route that has not been used yet.
You are allowed to be your own messenger, and it is a legitimate and ancient move. It is written that faith comes by hearing, which is a sentence about a route into a person rather than about a quantity of belief, and His Spirit is the one who carries a true thing the last few inches into somebody after it has bounced off eleven times.
And say the guard, because this is where it could turn into a technique. Nothing on this page is a requirement. No number of times, no words that have to be right, no state you have to reach, and nothing routed to anybody at all. If you never say a word to yourself and the news lands in three weeks while you are doing something else, you are exactly as much His either way, that is the written shape of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one keeping this from becoming a method.
Something can land here, finally, in whatever room this has found you in, and it costs you nothing at all.
You have not failed to be grateful. Scripture takes for granted that a person can hold a good fact and not have received it, and writes a psalm addressed to exactly that gap, and the Holy Spirit is the one making that read as understanding rather than as a diagnosis.
Two things this is not. It is not the opening of a scheme and there is nothing further down that turns this into a routine. And it is not a promise that the bracing lifts today, because a body takes its own time and what God does in your particular timing is His to decide.
You have somebody to tell who has not been told yet, and it is you. That is written, and His Spirit is the one who sat somebody down beside you on a bench this morning.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud where you can hear yourself, which is the whole point of them. The standing to speak to God like this is yours in Christ and does not depend on whether your insides have caught up, Scripture is the ground under it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries a true thing the last few inches. What He does next in your circumstances is His to decide, and none of these lines is a lever.
- Soul of mine that did not look up when the letter came, you were never going to be argued into this. The word of God has a man say bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits, which is a man speaking out loud to his own inside. I am telling you the news properly and I am saying it where I can hear it.
- Bracing that has outlasted the thing it was braced for, get off this bench, because the hearing is finished and the papers are signed. In the name of Jesus I put you down at the bus stop, since what is written says faith comes by hearing and gives me a route in that eleven conversations did not use. His Spirit is the one carrying it the last few inches.
- Father, You went with my sister through three years of forms and two solicitors and a hearing that moved twice. Your word says forget not all His benefits, and Your Spirit is the one who sat a seventy year old woman down next to me and got the question out of her. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and I am glad to say so out loud.
Psalm 103:1-2
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