The Notebook She Has Never Shown Anyone

Dee owns two notebooks and everybody has seen one of them.

The first one is green and it goes everywhere. It has the prayer list for the Tuesday group in it, and half a shopping list, and three phone numbers, and a page where she writes down the thing somebody says that she wants to remember. She prays out of that notebook in front of eleven other women every single week and she is good at it. People ask her to pray. When somebody in the group is in trouble they call Dee first, and she never makes it awkward, and she never makes it long.

The second notebook is in a drawer under some paperwork and it is not green.

It has one page written in it.

She wrote that page four years ago, in one sitting, at about two in the morning, and she has never read it to anybody and she has never read it out loud even alone. She has opened the drawer maybe a dozen times since. Sometimes she takes it out and puts it straight back. Once she nearly threw it away and then did not, and she could not have told you why either way.

Here is the thing she cannot square.

She believes, completely, everything she says on a Tuesday. When she tells a frightened woman that God is near and that there is nothing to be cleaned up first, she means it all the way down, and she is right, and the woman goes home lighter.

And then she goes home herself and the drawer is still shut.

It is not hypocrisy. She has been round that block and it is not that. It is something quieter and more stubborn: she can bring anybody else, and she cannot seem to bring the page. The words that work for eleven women do not seem to reach one drawer in her own house.

And this is where I stop writing about Dee, because you have a second notebook.

Maybe not paper. A subject you have prayed around for years without ever praying about. A thing you can talk to God about in every direction except straight at. You know the one. I am not going to ask you what is on it, and I will not hint at it once between here and the end of this page.

Boldly is the actual word

I want to put a verse in front of you and I want you to notice the adverb, because the adverb is the whole thing.

Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.Hebrews 4:16

Boldly. Not carefully. Not once you are ready. Not having first prepared a statement.

That is the written word and the Holy Spirit standing together on the same line, and neither of them asks for a statement at the door. Read the two verses before it sometime, because the argument runs in an order most people reverse. The writer does not say: God knows everything, therefore approach nervously. He says God knows everything, He has been through it, nothing about you is a surprise in that room, and therefore come in boldly.

The full knowledge is the reason for the boldness. Not the obstacle to it.

That reverses something you have believed about the drawer for four years. You have treated the unread page as the thing that has to be handled before you can come in properly. Hebrews 4:16 treats being fully known as the ground you walk in on, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings a person through that door rather than leaving them working up to it.

Look at what you are told to come and get. Mercy, and grace to help in time of need. Not a verdict. Not a review. The throne is described by what comes off it, and what comes off it is help.

So hear this plainly. You are welcome in that room with the second notebook still shut, and Scripture says come boldly and never once says come having explained, and the Holy Spirit is not standing at the door with a form.