Eighteen Years Bent Over

The first person said it four years ago and she thinks about that conversation most weeks.

She had gone to somebody she trusted with something that had been done to her. Not a disagreement. Something done, by a person, over a long time, that she had told almost nobody about.

And the woman listened well for about ten minutes, and then said, kindly, that in her experience when a hurt stays this long there is usually pride underneath it, and that a truly humble heart would have let it go by now.

She has heard a version of that four times since, from four different people, all of whom love her.

So she has been working on her pride. That is what she has been doing for four years. She has confessed it, she has fasted about it, she has asked God to show her the root of it, and every time the hurt comes back she has taken it as evidence that the pride is still there.

She has got smaller every year. That is the plain fact of it. Quieter, less certain, more careful in a room. And everybody has told her this is growth.

If somebody has told you your hurt is pride, this article is for you, and I am going to be very plain.

What He did on a Sabbath in front of everybody

Let me say it without one word of softening.

That diagnosis was wrong. Not partly right, not well meant but clumsy. Wrong. Nobody in that room had the standing to make it and none of the four had access to the inside of you, and a hurt that does not go away is not evidence of pride. It is evidence of a hurt.

Now read what Jesus did with a woman who had been bent for a long time, and read every part of it, because every part of it matters.

There was a woman who had been bent double for eighteen years and could not straighten up at all. She was in the synagogue. She had not asked for anything and there is no record of her saying one word.

And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity.Luke 13:12

He called her over. He did it on a Sabbath, in public, in front of the man who ran the building, and when that man objected on procedural grounds Jesus answered him in front of everybody and called what had been done to her a binding.

He did not ask her to examine herself first. He did not suggest that eighteen years was a long time to still be bent. He called her over and He straightened her up and He argued with the man who had a problem with the timing.

You are somebody Jesus calls over rather than diagnoses, and He has never once asked you to account for how long it has taken. That is not my kindness to you. It is written in Luke 13:12, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my sentence who carries a written line past a woman's ears into the place where she actually lives.

So four years of working on your pride has not been humility. You have a dignity God gave and no diagnosis can spend, and it is intact this evening. The word settled that long before anybody said it to you, and the same Spirit who inspired it is in the room while you read this.

What that sentence actually does

Here is worth naming exactly, because you have been carrying it as information and it is not information.

Your hurt is really pride is a sentence with one function. It moves the subject from what was done to you to what is wrong with you, and once that move is made there is nothing left for anybody to look at except your interior, and you have been looking at your interior for four years.

Notice what the sentence never requires. It never requires anybody to ask what happened. Not one of the four asked you for the facts of it, because the sentence does not need them.

And notice what it does to a person who takes it seriously, which you did, because you are conscientious. Every time the hurt returns, the sentence tells you it is more evidence of the fault. So there is no exit. A test where every result confirms the diagnosis is not a test.

You have not been getting humbler for four years. You have been getting smaller, which is a different thing, and this site exists to keep those two words apart.

You have permission to name what was done to you, and naming it is not the opposite of humility. Luke 13 has Him calling a bent woman over without one question about her interior; His Spirit is the one who lets a person tell the difference between conviction, which is specific and lifts, and a charge that only ever presses down.

Now, plainly, and this is the part that matters most on this page. Nothing here is telling you what to do about any person in your life, and nothing here is adjudicating anything, because I do not know your situation and no page does. That is yours, and it belongs to the people who actually know your life, and to God.

What can be said is this. If somebody is hurting you or has hurt you, that is not something God is asking you to absorb as an act of worship, and you are allowed to reach for help. Tell one person who can act. A doctor. A counselor. In the United States, 1 800 799 7233 is the domestic violence line and 988 answers by call or text at any hour, and if you are in danger right now, use your emergency number.