Through the Water and Not Alone In It

The rope swing has been there longer than any of them and every year somebody says it needs replacing and every year it does not get replaced and every year it holds.

River bank. Late August, that gold hour. Towels on the grass and somebody's bag with a bag of ice in it that is now mostly water. Three of them with their feet in and one of them screaming about how cold it is.

She is laughing. Genuinely.

And she is also, and has been for about a year and a half, running at about forty percent inside.

Something happened at a job. It was not a crime and nobody would have gone to prison and she has never used a big word about it. But something in her went flat afterward, and stayed flat, and honestly it is manageable. She works. She sees people. She is at a river with her feet in the water.

What is grinding on her is not the flatness. It is the people who love her.

Because two of them have started saying things. Gentle things. Have you thought about talking to someone. You know it has been a while. We just want the old you back.

They mean it kindly and every single one of those sentences lands as a schedule she is failing to meet.

Hey. Come sit on the bank with me a second, feet in. Because there is a verse everybody knows and I want you to notice which word it uses about the water and what it promises and what it does not.

When, not if, and company rather than speed

Isaiah 43. God is speaking to people who are going to go through a great deal.

When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.Isaiah 43:2

Two things in that sentence and both matter enormously for a young woman on a bank.

When. Not if. He does not promise that the water will not happen. He is entirely realistic about the water and He says so first.

I will be with thee. And then the promise, and look at exactly what is promised. Company. Not speed. Not a shortcut. Not a schedule.

Nothing in that verse tells anybody how long the crossing takes.

You are promised company rather than a timetable, and the verse that names the water is honest about the water before it says anything else. That is not a way of excusing a year and a half; Isaiah 43:2 opens with when rather than if and promises presence rather than pace, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a word given to a whole people and lays it on a river bank in late August with a bag of melted ice in it. Nobody in that sentence is being timed.

Now the second half, and it is about the people who love you, because they are not the enemy and they are also the thing hurting you most.

We just want the old you back. That sentence is meant as love and it functions as a deadline. It tells you there is a version of you that is correct, that you are currently failing to be it, and that other people are waiting.

Here is what I want you to see. God does not deal in a previous version of anybody. He is not trying to restore you to the you of two years ago. The whole language of the book is forward: a new thing, a new heart, mercies that are new this morning.

You are not being restored to an earlier edition, and nothing in that book has God working backward toward who somebody used to be. Isaiah 43:19 says behold, I will do a new thing, in the very same chapter, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes new mean new rather than repaired, which takes the whole comparison off the table.

Pace is not a virtue and it is not a fault

One more thing, and then we will get to the useful part.

There is no verse anywhere that assigns a right speed to coming round. There is no benchmark. Elijah gets fed and sleeps and gets fed again and only then is spoken to, and that is over days, and nobody in the text hurries him.

Which means the flatness lasting eighteen months is not, in itself, evidence of anything. Not of failure, not of unbelief, not of a problem with you.

And this matters practically: it means you are allowed to be exactly where you are today in front of God, at forty percent, without apologizing for the percentage.

You are welcome at whatever percentage you are running at, and He has never once set a rate for this. Psalm 34:18 says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, which is a location and not a stage of recovery, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes nearness independent of progress.

And here is the last piece, because you have a mouth and it does more than laugh at a river.

Jesus said in Matthew 17:20 that faith the size of a mustard seed, spoken to a mountain, is enough to move it. The smallest seed there is. Not what percentage of you is currently online. That a person opens their mouth and says what God has said. You have that standing because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and speaking is the appointed way this works. We flip the switch. He sends the current.