She Typed It and Did Not Send It

Half past eleven and the phone is in both hands and the screen has gone dim twice.

Priya. Not a friend exactly. They did a project together in year ten and they are friendly in the way you are with somebody who is not in your group.

And something is wrong.

She knows because of about six things and none of them would sound like anything if you said them out loud. She stopped doing the thing she does with her hair. She has been early to everything, which sounds like nothing and is not nothing if you know she was never early to anything. Somebody said something in the corridor on Tuesday and she did not react at all.

And she was not at Lauren's thing, and she said it was her mom, and it was not her mom.

Three drafts.

The first one was too much. It said hey, is everything okay, I have noticed a few things, and she read it back and it sounded like a teacher.

The second one was too little. It said hey, and then nothing, and she deleted it because a hey with nothing after it is a thing you send to somebody you fancy.

The third one is sitting there now and she has not sent it and it has been sitting there for about eleven minutes.

And what she has been doing instead, quite genuinely and not as a dodge, is praying about it. Every night for about two weeks.

And she has started to notice, at half past eleven with a phone in both hands, that praying about it has begun to function as the thing she does instead.

If you know somebody is not okay and you have typed it and not sent it, you know that eleven minutes. And you know the sentence: I am doing something about this, and I am also not doing anything about this, and both of those are true tonight.

The word, and then a distinction John draws

Let me sit on the end of the bed and be straight, because you are eighteen and you will spot anything soft.

The problem is not the wording. All three drafts were fine. Nobody in the history of the world has received a message like that and thought about the wording, because a person who is not okay reads only one thing in it, which is that somebody noticed.

The problem is that you have found something out about praying tonight, and it is not that praying is fake, it is that it can be used as a place to put a thing so that you are not carrying it any more, and you caught yourself doing it, which almost nobody does at eighteen.

So let me put the word straight first.

Blessed does not mean being the sort of person who sends it. It means the favor of God is resting on a person, His face is turned toward them. It is about where He is looking. It is on you tonight with three deleted drafts and one unsent one.

Now the verse, and I want you to look at what John puts side by side.

But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.1 John 3:17-18

Let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth.

Notice that John is not attacking words. He is a man who wrote a great deal and he is writing this in words. What he is attacking is a specific substitution: a love that lives entirely in the saying and never arrives anywhere.

And notice the first half of it, which sets the scene. Seeth his brother have need. The seeing is already there in the verse. The problem is not that the man in that verse has not noticed. He has noticed. That is the whole reason John is talking about him.

You have already done the first half of that verse, which is the seeing, and you did it from six things nobody else counted. First John 3:17 has the seeing before it has the shutting up, and it is the Holy Spirit who is the one who gives that kind of noticing to a person, which means the six things were shown to you rather than assembled by you.

About the praying

Now the praying, because it deserves a proper answer and not a scolding.

Two weeks of praying for Priya is not nothing. It is not fake and it is not a cop out and you have genuinely been doing it and I am not going to have that dismissed.

And it can also become a place to put a thing.

Here is the test, and it is quick. Would you tell her you had been praying for her? If the answer is that you would find that unbearably awkward, that is normal and means nothing. But ask the second one: has the praying made you more likely to send the message, or less?

You know the answer. It has made you less, because it discharges the feeling that would otherwise make you press send, and once the feeling is discharged the message stays in the box.

That is not wickedness. That is a mechanism, and it operates in people who are forty as well as people who are eighteen, and most of them never notice it.

You have noticed something at eighteen that most people never notice, and noticing it is the entire fix. First John 3:18 sets the word against the deed rather than against prayer, and it is the Holy Spirit who convicts about a specific thing at half past eleven rather than running a general case against a person.

And I want to be plain that prayer and sending are not in competition. Do both. Pray tonight and send tonight. The verse is not asking you to stop one, it is naming what happens when a person only does the one that costs less.

You are being asked for both rather than for one instead of the other, and John never once sets prayer against action. The written word contrasts word and deed rather than prayer and deed, and His Spirit is the one who prompts a person toward the half they have been holding back.

What the message actually needs to be

So here is the practical part, and it is smaller than you think.

It does not need to name anything. You do not have to say I have noticed six things, and you should not, because she will feel watched.

It does not need to ask a big question. Are you okay is a question people say no to by saying yes.

What it needs is to be specific and small and to require almost nothing of her. Something like: I am getting a coffee before form on Thursday, come if you want. Or: I have got a free on Friday, are you around.

A thing with a time in it and a door she can walk through without having to say anything about herself.

You have something you can send that costs her nothing to receive, and that is what makes it possible for her to say yes. First John 3:18 asks for the deed rather than the declaration, and it is the Holy Spirit who is at work in a small specific thing with a time in it rather than in a grand offer.

And nothing comes back to you for it. She may not reply. She may reply and not come. She may come and talk about something else entirely for forty minutes, which is actually the most likely outcome and is not a failure, it is the point.

And if anything she tells you frightens you, or if you ever think she is in danger, tell an adult that day. Not later. A teacher, your mom, somebody. That is not betraying her. That is the deed too.