You have typed four or five things into that box and deleted all of them.
Why does God. Delete.
How do I make sense of. Delete, because you do not want sense made of it and you would not trust anybody who offered.
Is it wrong to. Delete, because that one turned out to be about you rather than about him and you did not want to look at it at eleven at night.
The results, when you have let a search run, are all about somebody else's question. There is a great deal written about grief and a great deal about suffering and some of it is good, and none of it is about the specific thing sitting in you since March.
And you cannot say what the specific thing is.
That is the whole difficulty. If you could phrase it you could take it somewhere. You could ask somebody, or look it up, or at least argue with an answer.
What you have is not a question in the ordinary sense. It is a shape. Something in you is turned toward the fact of him not being here and it is asking, and there are no words in it at all, and every time you try to put words in it turns into a different question that is not yours.
What this page will not do
This is the category where the site refuses to be useful in the ordinary way, so let me say plainly what I am not going to do.
I am not going to answer it. I do not know what it is and neither do you, and a stranger who answers an unformed question has answered a different one.
I am not going to help you phrase it. That sounds kind and it is the same move: the moment somebody hands you a wording, you will start carrying their question instead of yours, and you have had three months of that from articles. That is Scripture's sentence and not mine, Job 42:3, and it is the Holy Spirit and not this page who makes it true where you are.
I am not going to explain why he died. Nobody on this earth is going to do that and you should be extremely careful of anybody who tries.
And I am not going to tell you what he would have wanted or where he is now with a confidence I do not have.
If any of this is heavier than it should be, or you are not sleeping, or the days have gone dark, that is a thing to take to a doctor or to a bereavement service, and doing so is not a failure of anything.
You are not further from God for having nothing to ask properly. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and nearness is not conditional on being able to say what is broken, and the Holy Spirit is in that hall with somebody who has deleted five attempts.
The verse is a man saying he does not understand
There is a line near the end of Job that people quote as repentance and which is more interesting than that.
Therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.Job 42:3
Notice what he says. Not I was wrong in the sense of having held an incorrect position. I uttered that I understood not.
He had been talking for thirty-eight chapters, at length, with considerable skill, about a thing he did not understand. And when God finally speaks, God does not explain it either. That is the part everybody skips: the answer to Job is not an answer. It is a very long series of questions about wild goats and the sea and the ostrich, and at the end of it Job is satisfied, and nobody has told him why any of it happened.
He never finds out. It is not in the book.
That is worth having tonight, because you have been assuming that not having a formed question is a failure on your part, and here is the central book in Scripture about exactly this, and its resolution contains no explanation at all.
You are not lacking something the Bible provides elsewhere. Scripture says things too wonderful for me, which I knew not, Job 42:3, and it stands as the end of the argument rather than as a stage before the real answer, and the Holy Spirit is not withholding a chapter where it gets explained.
Why the search keeps returning somebody else's question
The mechanism is simple and it is not your fault.
A search matches words. You have no words. So what comes back is matched against whatever you managed to type, which was always an approximation, and the approximation was always somebody else's question because those are the ones that have been written down. Scripture stands under that in Job 42:3, and the Holy Spirit does the part no sentence can do.
That is why every result has been slightly off, and why the slight offness has been so tiring: each one is close enough to engage with and wrong enough to leave you where you were. It is written, in Job 42:3, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes what is written off a page and into a life.
And there is a worse effect. After three months of near misses, you have started to suspect that your question is not a real one, because it does not appear anywhere. Scripture settles that in Job 42:3, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it rather than these words.
It is real. It has been running since March, it wakes you, and it has survived five attempts to write it down, which is not what imaginary things do.
You are not asking something that does not exist. Scripture says the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered, Romans 8:26, and the unutterable is named as a real category that gets carried rather than dismissed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes what has no words in it.
What is available tonight
Not the answer. Not a better phrasing.
Just this: it can be said badly.
Out loud, to God, exactly as unformed as it is. Not why did You let this happen, if that is not it, and it probably is not, because that one is available in words and yours is not.
Say the actual thing. I do not know what I am asking. There is something in me about him and it will not turn into a sentence. Here it is.
That is the whole of it. Nothing is being requested. No answer is expected tonight or possibly ever, and I am not going to promise you one, because Job did not get one.
But it will have been said, and an unformed thing that has been said out loud is held differently from one that has been sitting in a man since March.
You are not required to form it first. Scripture says pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us, Psalm 62:8, and pouring out is unshaped by definition, and the Holy Spirit is not waiting on a coherent version.
There is no breakthrough here and I am not going to manufacture one.
What is available is that tonight is the first night it does not have to be phrased.
Stop typing. Close the box; it has given you three months of other people's questions and it will give you a fourth.
Say yours out loud, badly, to God, in the words that will not work.
And then let it be unanswered. That is the hardest instruction on this site and it is the honest one: Job's is unanswered in the text, and he is not rebuked for it, and the book ends with him satisfied and still not knowing.
If you want a person, go and see one. Not to have it explained; just to be in a room. That is what the man on the doorstep worked out and it took him months.
You are not carrying an imaginary thing, and no answer is being withheld from you that anybody else has. Scripture says therefore have I uttered that I understood not, Job 42:3, and the Holy Spirit has been present since March in a question that has never once turned into a sentence.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in the plainest words you have. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the standing to speak was given to you and three unformed months have not withdrawn it. Scripture carries every line here and the Holy Spirit brings them the distance. Nothing here explains this and nothing here promises an answer; He answers in His own way and the outcome is His, and however He answers, none of it is a verdict on you.
- Rule that a question has to be phrased before it can be brought, you are not His and you are not staying. The Word of God has a man say he uttered what he understood not, and in the name of Jesus I bring a thing with no words in it.
- Suspicion that my question is not real, get out of this house. Scripture says the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered, Romans 8:26, and the Holy Spirit has never once dismissed the unutterable as imaginary.
- Lord, Job never found out and the book ends with him satisfied and still not knowing, and You have been here since March. The box is closed, and I have said it out loud exactly as badly as it comes.
Job 42:3
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