The Gate She Stopped Latching

There is a gate at the top of that garden that has a latch and a habit.

The habit is that you have to lift it slightly and then let it fall, and if you do not it looks shut and is not, and the wind takes it in the night and it bangs.

She has known that for years. Everybody in the house knows it.

And somewhere in the last while she has stopped doing it. Not once, and not on purpose. She goes through with her hands full and she pushes it with her elbow and it looks shut, and about one night in five it bangs, and she lies in bed and thinks, I really must start lifting that again.

Now here is the thing I actually want to tell you, and the gate is only the picture.

Her closest friend rang last week. They have known each other since they were nineteen. And the friend asked how she was, in the particular way that this friend asks it, which is not a greeting.

And she heard herself say: fine, thanks, all good here.

She put the phone down and stood in the kitchen and thought, that is not true, and it is not even nearly true, and I have said it now three or four times in a row.

Nothing is wrong. That is the strange part. She is not in trouble, she is not hiding a catastrophe. There is just a mild gray stretch that she has not felt like describing, and one week she did not describe it, and then it became easier not to, and now there is a small door in that friendship that used to be open and is currently pushed to with an elbow.

She has not mentioned it. It is far too small to mention.

If you have said fine thanks lately when it was not true, come and lean on this wall a minute. Nothing here is going to turn into a list.

The little ones are named on purpose

There is a line in the Song of Songs that is easy to miss because it arrives in the middle of a love poem.

Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom.Song of Songs 2:15

Two things are worth stopping for.

The first is little. Not the wild animal that would take the whole vineyard. The small ones, the ones you would not report, the ones nobody organizes a hunt over. Scripture had the option of talking about a catastrophe and chose instead to name the thing that is not a catastrophe.

The second is in blossom. The vineyard in that verse is not dying. It is in the best condition it has been in all year. The instruction is given to people whose lives are going well, which is exactly why it applies to a woman leaning on a wall with a mug on a bright morning.

You have been shown something small while it is still small, and that is kindness rather than complaint. Song of Songs 2:15 names the little ones on purpose, and it is the Holy Spirit who does the showing, which is why what arrived in your kitchen was one sentence about one phone call and not an inventory of your entire life.

One. Not the other four.

Now let me guard something, because I know what happens next in a person who has just seen one thing clearly.

You go looking for the rest.

Do not. This is the point where a kindness gets turned into a project, and the project always ends in the same place: a long list, a heavy chest, and nothing at all actually put back.

Notice what you were actually given. Not a summary of your character. Not a review of the year. One specific sentence about one specific phrase said to one specific friend, and then silence. That restraint is the signature of the One who did it.

You are being dealt with gently, and you are not under inspection. Isaiah 42:3 says a bruised reed He will not break and a faintly burning wick He will not quench, and it is His Spirit who carries a word at exactly the temperature a person can take, so nothing in that kitchen was an alarm going off.

And here is the ground under all of it, the thing this whole site rests on. You are being kept while you keep watch, and the spotting of things was never resting on your eyesight. Philippians 1:6 says the One who began a good work in you is the one carrying it through to completion, and it is the Holy Spirit who noticed a phone call you had already stopped noticing, because God is the one keeping you and you are not standing this watch alone.

There is no alarm here. Nobody is telling you that a gray fortnight has cost you anything. A door pushed to with an elbow is not a door that has been shut, and you can lift the latch tonight in about four seconds.