The Bed Is Still Made Up

Nell changes the sheets on the first of the month whether anybody has slept in them or not.

She has done it for three years and two months. She strips the bed, she washes them, she hangs them on the line if it is dry, and she makes it back up with the corners the way her mother did them, and she puts the good quilt on the end folded in three.

There is a lamp on the little table with a bulb in it that works. There is a glass. There is a towel over the back of the chair, and it is changed on the first as well.

Her granddaughter is twenty-two. She was here at Christmas two years ago for four days and she was thin and she was funny and she washed up on the second night without being asked and Nell has thought about that washing up more than about almost anything else that has happened to her since.

She has not been back.

Nell is seventy-nine. Her son, the girl's father, does not speak about it. Her daughter-in-law asked her once, kindly, in a car park, whether keeping the room ready was good for her, and Nell said yes and changed the subject, and has never brought it up again with anybody.

And here is what she does not say, not to her son and not at that church and not to the woman she has known for fifty years:

I do not know if I am hoping or if I am just an old woman who cannot admit something. And there is nobody I can ask, because everybody who loves me would say the kind thing, and I do not want the kind thing, I want to know.

And here is where I quit talking about Nell, because you have your own room, or your own drawer, or your own thing you keep going with, and somebody asked you kindly about it once and you changed the subject.

Let me say the first thing plain, the way a neighbor would. Nobody in this is going to tell you what your granddaughter will do. I do not know and nobody who tells you they do is telling you the truth. What I can do is deal with the question you actually asked, which is whether the waiting is a foolish thing.

Quiet waiting has a verdict in Scripture

Let me set the true thing down first, because it is the exact question and it has an answer.

Your waiting is not foolishness and it is not an old woman failing to face something. There is a verse that puts a word on it, and the word is not what people expect:

It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.Lamentations 3:26

Take the word good, because that is the whole answer to what you asked. Not: understandable. Not: forgivable in the circumstances. Good, which is a verdict, and it is God's.

So hear it turned straight at you, because a verdict is no use said about somebody in general. You are not a foolish old woman and your hoping is not a failure of nerve. You are doing a thing God Himself has called good, right now, on the first of the month, with a quilt folded in three at the end of a bed. That is what the written word says over you, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it land in you rather than merely read well.

And take quietly, which is doing real work in that sentence. It is not the noisy kind of hoping that has to keep announcing itself, and it is not a woman insisting to a room. It is a quiet, ordinary, monthly sort of waiting, done with sheets, without any evidence, and Scripture calls it good.

And look at where that verse sits. It is in the middle of Lamentations, which is a book about a city that was actually destroyed. That is not a hopeful book and it is not written by somebody who had been spared anything. The waiting is called good by a man in ruins.

So the sheets are not a failure to face facts, and Scripture is where I get that rather than my own kindness, and God's Spirit is not standing in that little room on the first of the month thinking you should know better.

What the room is actually for

Now let me be honest with you, the way a neighbor ought to be, because you asked to know rather than to be comforted.

There are two things a person can be doing with a room like that, and they look identical from the doorway.

One is hope. Hope keeps a room ready and lives the rest of the month. It goes to church, it sees people, it takes the good quilt out on the first and puts it back, and it does not require anything to have happened by any particular date.

The other is a bargain. A bargain keeps a room ready and charges rent for it: it says that if the room is ever not ready, that is the failure, and it slowly takes over a life until an old woman is afraid to go away for a week in case.

You can tell them apart, and here is the test, and you already know the answer.

Could you go to your sister's for four days without the sheets being changed on the first?

If you could, the room is hope and it is good and Scripture says so. If the thought makes something in your chest go tight, then it has become a bargain, and the bargain is not from God and it can come off without the room going anywhere.

And here is the thing to hold on to either way: your granddaughter is not being kept alive by a made bed, and God has not put that girl's life in an old woman's laundry. Nothing you do or fail to do on the first of the month bears on where she is. That is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it something you can put down rather than something you nod at.

And the plain half, the way it should be said. There is real help for you, not only for her, and none of it is weak faith. There are family groups for people who love somebody using and they are full of grandmothers, and nobody in that room would find one word of this strange. Tell your daughter-in-law the truth next time she asks, in that car park, instead of changing the subject, because she asked once and she was right to. And if that girl is ever in danger, get medical help immediately, and in the United States she or you can call or text 988 at any hour. There are people awake right now.