He Preserves the Souls of His Own

Fourteen months out, and she still checks the door.

She would tell you she is doing well and she would be telling the truth. She is out. She has not gone back. There are people in her life now who did not know her before and who would be genuinely surprised by the whole story, which she finds strange and mostly likes.

But there is a thing she does that she has never told anybody about.

She rehearses going back.

Not wanting to. That is what is confusing about it. She does not want it and has not wanted it since about month four. She simply cannot stop running the scenario in which it happens: the week that goes badly, the phone call, the evening where she is tired enough, the specific street, and then the whole of it again, and her sitting in the wreckage explaining to people who trusted her.

It plays at odd moments. In a queue. Doing the washing. Once in the middle of a lovely afternoon, out of nowhere, at a table with strung lights over it and everybody laughing.

Because underneath everything she has built in fourteen months there is a sentence she has never said out loud, and it is this: I got myself out, and I am the only thing keeping me out, and I know exactly how strong I am, which is why I am frightened.

Look at who is doing the preserving

Ye that love the LORD, hate evil: he preserveth the souls of his saints; he delivereth them out of the hand of the wicked (Psalm 97:10).

Two verbs and both of them have the same subject.

He preserves. He delivers. Not: they hold on, and He notices. Not: they stay strong, and He rewards it. He preserves the souls of His own, and He delivers them out of a hand that had hold of them, and the whole grammar of that verse puts the strength on His side of the sentence.

Which means the fourteen months were not a solo effort that could end the moment your strength does.

You have been preserved by Someone stronger than the thing you came out of. The word puts both verbs on Him, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that real in a woman who has been quietly carrying her own freedom, because Scripture says it is God who works in you both to will and to do (Philippians 2:13), which covers the wanting as well as the doing.

Rehearsing is not wanting

Now let me take something off you that has been frightening you, because I think you have misread it and the misreading is costing you.

You have assumed that the scenario playing in your head is evidence of desire. That some part of you must want it, or it would not keep coming.

That is not how a mind that has been through something works. A mind rehearses what it is afraid of. It runs the disaster in order to be ready for it, and it does that with everything: illness, bereavement, losing a job. The rehearsal is fear doing its job badly, and it is not appetite, and reading it as appetite is what has made a lovely afternoon at a table with strung lights suddenly unsafe.

You are not being betrayed by your own heart and the rehearsal is not a confession. The word says God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7), and a sound mind is one that can tell the difference between a memory and a wish, and it is the Holy Spirit who supplies that soundness rather than a person achieving it.

Out of the hand

Notice the picture in the second half of the verse: He delivers them out of the hand.

A hand is a claim. Something in a hand is held, owned, controlled. And what the psalm says is that God takes people out of the hand, which is a legal removal and not a lucky escape.

Which means the thing you came out of does not still have a hand on you. It may have a memory of you, and a voice, and a street. It does not have a claim, because a claim requires a hold, and the hold was broken by Somebody else.

You have been taken out of a hand and you are not on loan. Scripture says whom the Son sets free is free indeed (John 8:36), and indeed is there to close the door on exactly the question you keep asking, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes freedom felt as well as legal.

And here is the honest edge, because a woman fourteen months out has been lied to before and can spot it. This does not promise you an easy year and it does not say the street loses its pull. You will still keep your wisdom about the phone and the tiredness and the specific evening, and you should. What is settled is who has been preserving your soul for fourteen months, and it was never only you.