One Person Keeping It

The thought arrived quietly and it has a certain logic to it, which is why it has been so hard to shake.

If a promise is between two people, and only one of them is still keeping it, then what is left is not really a promise. It is one person's habit. A private arrangement that the other party has quietly stopped being part of.

And once you have thought that, everything you do starts to feel slightly absurd. The turning up, the remembering, the not going anywhere. All of it, performed by one person, in a marriage the other one has stopped actively holding.

Before we go one line further, the thing that comes first on this row.

If the person you live with frightens you, controls you, hurts you, or has made you smaller and more afraid than you used to be, then none of what follows applies to you and I am not going to wrap it in the language of promises. That is not a covenant kept alone, and nobody who cares about you would tell you to keep absorbing it. 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, let me take that piece of logic apart, because there is a flaw in it and the flaw is not small.

Kindness that is not taken back

There is a line in Psalm 89 where God describes His own conduct in an arrangement where the other side has not held up their end.

Nevertheless my lovingkindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail (Psalm 89:33, King James Version)

Read the setting. The verses immediately before it describe the other party breaking what they agreed and being disciplined for it. The relationship is genuinely one sided at this point in the passage.

And then: nevertheless. Which is the whole hinge.

You are looking at a model where one side keeps and the other does not, and Psalm 89 has never once called that arrangement finished. Psalm 89:33 has the lovingkindness stay in place after the other party's failure, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that into a description of something rather than a comfort about nothing.

That is what dismantles your logic. Your argument assumes a promise requires two active parties to remain a promise. Psalm 89 has God keeping one where the other side is not, and nowhere does the text suggest the thing has stopped existing.

You have a covenant that is currently being kept by one, and it has never once needed both to still be a covenant. The passage holds the faithfulness in place on one side alone, and the Spirit of God is the one who tells a woman her keeping is not a private habit.

Who the third party is

There is a second thing in your logic, and it is the larger of the two errors.

The count has been two people. There were three.

The promise was made to God as well as to him. That is what makes a vow a vow rather than an agreement. God received it, and God is a party to it, and God has not stopped keeping His end.

Which means the arrangement you described, where one party has withdrawn and one is left performing alone, is not what is happening. Two parties are keeping this. One of them is you. The other one is not your husband.

You are one of two who are still holding this, and the arithmetic has never once been one against a house. Psalm 89:33 has God refuse to take His lovingkindness away when the other side fails, and the Holy Spirit is the one who puts the third party back into a woman's count.

You were never performing a private habit, and a covenant with God inside it has never once been reducible to one person's routine. It is written that His faithfulness does not fail even where the other party has, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that a fact about a real house on a real Tuesday.

Tell one person, and let the count be seen

Here is the assignment and it follows straight from the arithmetic.

Tell one person the truth about how alone this has been.

Because here is the thing. The count in your head has been one, and the truth is more than one, and telling somebody makes that visible in the world as well as in the theology.

You have two already holding this and are about to have three, and Psalm 89 has never once described a one sided arrangement as finished. Psalm 89:33 keeps the lovingkindness in place after the other side has failed, and the Spirit of God is the one who corrects an arithmetic a woman has carried for a year.

One person, chosen because they can hear something without instructing you. A friend of long standing. A pastor, if that is a safe person in your case. A counselor.

And one sentence: I am the only one in this house still holding this, and I have not said that to anybody.

You are able to let one more person into the count, and it has never once been necessary for the other party to rejoin before you did. Psalm 89:33 keeps the faithfulness in place from one side, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a woman's real arithmetic becomes visible to somebody else.