They read everything together for nine years. That is the sentence he keeps returning to, because it is the one that will not sit still.
Everything. The same books at the same time, in a particular order, with a running argument that went on across most of their twenties and thirties and that neither of them ever wanted to win. They prayed together perhaps a thousand times. They knew each other's handwriting in the margins.
Then came the season that changed his life. His friend was in every room of it with him. They went in together, they stayed for the whole of it, and there is not a single meeting of that season that one of them attended without the other.
And his friend came out of it and, over about four years, stopped believing any of it.
Not in anger. He is not a scoffer, he does not write things on the internet, he has never once mocked what happened. He is a kind man with a good marriage who sends a card at Christmas and asks properly after the children, and if you asked him he would say, without heat, that he no longer thinks any of it is true.
And the man who is left cannot work out what he is holding. Was that a cost of the thing? Was it something entirely separate that happened to arrive in the same decade? He does not know, and he has never once been able to say it out loud in a room where people would understand, and so it has sat in him for eleven years with no name and no place to go.
If somebody walked into it beside you and did not walk out with you, sit down at the table. Neither of you is going on trial here.
The grief does not need a cause to be grief
Let us look at the trap he has been in for eleven years, because it is a clever one and it has kept him from mourning at all.
He has decided, without ever putting it in words, that he cannot grieve this until he knows what caused it. If the season caused it, the grief means something about the season. If it did not, then perhaps the grief is not even his to feel. So the mourning waits, and it has been waiting eleven years for an answer that will not arrive in this life.
Grief does not work on that schedule. It does not require an established cause and it never has. A man does not have to complete an inquiry before he is allowed to miss his friend.
You may mourn this now. Nothing about not knowing why has ever made your grief improper or premature. I am not saying that to close a question. Scripture says the LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit (Psalm 34:18), which attaches nearness to the condition of a heart rather than to an explanation of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that hold in a man with eleven years of margins in his handwriting.
Nearness attached to a condition, not to a reason
Here is the part I keep going back to, and it puts nothing on your friend.
Read what the verse requires of the broken hearted, because it is what the verse leaves out that matters.
The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.Psalm 34:18
Nigh unto them that are. Not unto them that understand. Not unto them who have established the sequence of events, or who can say what caused what, or who have decided who was at fault.
The qualification is a state, plainly described, and God's nearness is stated as a fact about Him rather than a response to a completed account.
You are near to Him in the condition you are actually in, and Scripture asks for no explanation before it says so. That is written into the verse itself, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries it to a man who has been waiting eleven years for permission.
Neither of you is being judged here
This has to be said very plainly, because a page like this could easily turn into a quiet accusation against a man who has done nothing to anybody.
Your friend is not a warning. He is not an argument, or a cautionary tale, or evidence for anything. He is a man you love who came to a different conclusion after nine years of reading beside you, and he has never mocked what happened to you, and he still asks after your children by name.
And you were not wrong to go where you went either.
This was real and it cost you. You can hold both without deciding which of you was wrong. Scripture says if it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men (Romans 12:18), where the concession admits that some of it was never in your keeping, and it is the Holy Spirit, and not a ruling on a friend, who lets you keep him and grieve at the same time.
And if these eleven years have gone past what a person can hold, if sleep has gone, if the Christmas card has become the hardest post of the year, please talk to somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, a crisis line, and the emergency services if there is danger to anybody tonight. That is not a detour around God. It is one of the ways He keeps people.
So here is the turn, and it is not a promise about what happens to your friend.
This was real and it cost you. You can hold both without deciding which of you was wrong. Scripture says the Lord is near to the broken hearted (Psalm 34:18), where nearness attaches to a condition and not to an explanation, and it is the Holy Spirit, not an account of what caused what, who receives eleven years of a grief that has never had anywhere to go.
I cannot tell you what God is doing in that man, or what comes of it, and I am not going to guess at it. Nobody honest would, and pretending otherwise would be its own kind of unkindness to both of you. What I can tell you is that you are permitted to mourn a living friend, and that you have been waiting eleven years for a permission that was granted long before you started waiting.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in your own voice. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the standing under these words is His rather than your own. You speak under His will and not yours, and what God does next, and when, is His to decide, however He answers.
- Grief I have never been allowed to file anywhere, you are a real weight and you are not a case about what caused what. Psalm 34 says the Lord is near to them that are of a broken heart, so nearness attaches to a condition and never once to an explanation, and the Holy Spirit has been near me through all eleven years of it. In the name of Jesus I stop waiting for a reason.
- Rule that I cannot mourn until I know why, you are not what God says about me and you are not sitting at this table tonight. Romans 12 says live peaceably as much as lieth in you, which admits that some of it was never in my keeping, and His Spirit holds me steady with no verdict on my friend. I am mourning him now.
- Father, You are near to the broken hearted and You save such as be of a contrite spirit, and Psalm 34 asks for no account of events before it says so. I thank You that he is still Yours to deal with and still mine to love, and that nine years of margins were real years, and Your Spirit held both halves of this while I could not. This was real and it cost me, and I can hold both without deciding which of us was wrong.
Psalm 34:18
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