I Drove Four Hours For Her

You left at half five in the morning and you did not think about it twice.

Four hours up, because she had said one sentence on the phone that did not sound like her, and the sentence sat in your chest all evening and by ten o'clock you had already put the bag by the door.

You stayed two nights. You cooked. You washed things that did not need washing because it gave her something to look at while she talked. You sat on the end of her bed at one in the morning and you did not once say the thing people say when they are trying to close a conversation.

You drove back on the Sunday and got in at nine and unpacked and went to work on Monday and did not mention it to anybody.

That is who you are. Nobody in your life would be surprised by a single detail of that.

Here is what nobody in your life would recognize.

Nobody has ever driven to you.

Not because they would not. Because you have never asked, not once, in your whole adult life. There is not a person alive who could tell you what your bad week looks like, because you have never let one be in the room for it.

Now, before we go anywhere near the why, let me be clear.

I am not catching you out.

There is nothing here to be embarrassed about, and I am not going to turn a four hour drive into a symptom. What you did for her last weekend was the real thing. God was in that car with you at half five in the morning and He was in that kitchen when you were washing things that did not need washing.

I am saying I noticed that the road only runs one way. That is all.

The law of the watered

Here is a proverb, and I want you to see that it is a proverb rather than a promise, because it is describing how things actually work.

The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself.Proverbs 11:25

Read the second half slowly. He that watereth shall be watered also himself.

Not may be. Not should be, if he is fortunate. The proverb states it the way you would state a law of the natural world, because in the economy God actually built, the watering runs in both directions. There is no such thing in Scripture as a person who is only ever a source.

You built one. You built one out of yourself, quite carefully, over about twenty years.

So I want to turn now and speak this over you, and I am going to be as plain as this proverb is.

You are one of the watered. Not one day, not when the schedule clears, not after everybody in your circle has come right. Right now, in the middle of an ordinary week with a bag still half unpacked in the hall, you are inside the second half of that verse, because the verse does not have an exemption clause for people who are good at giving. That is not me being warm at you. That is what is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who sets a written line down in a real person who does not know how to be on the receiving end of anything.

Now, why has nobody ever driven to you?

I do not think it is pride. I have known a lot of people like you and it is almost never pride. It is more like a rule you made once, young, in a house where asking did not go well, and nobody has gone back and looked at the rule since.

The rule said: I travel. And it has served you and it has served everybody around you and it has quietly cost you every single time.

That is not sin and it is not weakness. It is what happens to somebody who learned early that being needed was safer than being known.

But look at the first half of the proverb too, because they belong together. The liberal soul shall be made fat. Fat, in that language, means well fed and flourishing, not depleted. The Bible does not present the generous person as a person running down. It presents them as somebody being filled, and the filling is not a reward for the giving. It is the same economy.

And this next part is settled rather than pending, so hear it. You have permission to be on the receiving end of a journey. The word says he that watereth shall be watered also himself, and also himself is a phrase somebody put in on purpose, and it is His Spirit who carries a written line into a real life and refuses to let it stay theoretical.

You are not the well. You are a channel, and a channel that never receives is not humble. It is dry.