Eleven Times And Counting

You know the number. That is the part nobody would guess about you.

Eleven. And you could date most of them, and you could tell me what was said, and you have never told anybody that you keep a count. You have also kept the promise through all eleven, and nobody has ever mentioned that either.

Because keeping a count is what a bitter woman does. That is what you have decided about yourself, quietly, over about three years, and it has been doing more damage than the eleven things ever did.

Before anything else, because on this subject it has to come first.

If the repeated thing is somebody frightening you, controlling you or hurting you, then this is not a forgiveness question and I am not going to treat it as one. Forgiveness has never once meant staying where somebody is doing harm, and nobody who cares about you would ask you to take it again. Talk to somebody qualified where you live, this week, and if there is danger in that house, contact an emergency service or a domestic violence line today.

For everybody else: this is about an ordinary repeated offense in a house where nobody is frightening anybody, and about what the counting actually means.

Peter had a number too

There is a question in Matthew 18 asked by a man who had clearly been keeping his own tally.

Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? (Matthew 18:21, King James Version)

Read what he brings. Not a principle. A number. He has been counting, and he has a figure in mind, and he says it out loud in front of everybody.

And notice how he is answered. He is not rebuked for having counted. Nobody in the passage says: Peter, the fact that you have a number is the real problem here.

You are in company with a man who brought a number to Jesus, and Matthew 18 has never once treated the counting as the offense. Matthew 18:21 has a tally brought openly and answered without a rebuke for keeping it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a woman's private shame about a number and sets it beside Peter.

The answer he receives moves the number rather than condemning him for having one. That is a very different thing from what you have been doing to yourself.

You have been prosecuting yourself for the one thing in that passage nobody was prosecuted for, and no verse has ever once made a count into a character flaw. The passage receives the question as asked, and the Spirit of God is the one who lifts a self accusation a woman has carried for three years.

What a count actually is

Let me say what counting means, because it has been read entirely wrong.

A person counts when something has not been dealt with. That is all. Counting is what a mind does with an unresolved thing, the way it keeps returning to a task that has not been finished.

It is not malice. It is not a ledger being built for a future argument, whatever the fear about that has been. It is a mind holding open a file it has not been given permission to close.

And you have not been given permission to close it, because each time the thing recurs the file opens again, and there is nothing bitter about that. It is arithmetic.

You are counting because a file keeps reopening, and it has never once been because you are a bitter woman. Matthew 18:21 has a man arrive with a tally and be answered rather than accused, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells somebody what her own counting actually is.

You made a promise and you have been keeping it through all eleven, and the count has never once been the opposite of that. It is written that the question came with a number attached, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates a record from a resentment.

Say it out loud, both halves

Here is the assignment and it has two halves and the second one is the one that keeps you from becoming a doormat.

Say out loud, alone: I forgive it.

Say the actual thing. Not in general. Name it, briefly, and forgive it in words. Out loud, because out loud is what makes it an act rather than a state to be felt into.

Then say out loud what you will do differently. That is the second half and it is not optional.

You are allowed both halves in the same minute, and Matthew 18 has never once made forgiving into an agreement to stand in the same place again. Matthew 18:21 has a tally brought openly and answered without a rebuke for keeping it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present while a woman says both sentences.

Something like: I forgive the thing that happened in September, and I am not going to be the one who arranges that trip again.

Forgiving something is not agreeing to be in the same position when it happens next. Those are two separate decisions and this site will never blur them.

You are able to forgive a thing and change an arrangement in the same minute, and the two have never once been in conflict. Matthew 18:21 puts the forgiving in the foreground without asking anybody to remove their own judgment, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a woman says both halves out loud.