I Cannot Look at Photographs From Those Years

A woman told me there is a section of her own life she cannot look at, and that she means that literally.

There is a box. Everything from before it is fine and everything after it is fine, and there is a stretch of about six years in the middle that she has never gone through and does not intend to.

She said the strange part is that not all of the photographs are bad. Most of them are ordinary. Birthdays, a dog, a holiday, a kitchen. The bad thing is not in most of the pictures at all.

But it is in the years, and so the years are gone, and with them a great deal that had nothing to do with it: her daughter at eight, a house she loved, a friend who has since died.

She said: I gave away more than I did.

There is a chapter in Joel about eaten years that has a sentence in it about shame, and where the sentence sits is the whole point.

The promise sits after the naming

Here is the verse, and the one before it matters as much.

And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten... And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed. (Joel 2:25-26, King James Version)

My people shall never be ashamed.

Notice where that sits. It is not at the start of the chapter. It comes after the locusts have been named, after the loss has been described in detail, and after God has taken ownership of what happened.

Nothing is skipped to get there. Joel does not reach the promise about shame by minimizing anything; he reaches it by going through the whole account first.

And notice what is in the same sentence: eating in plenty, being satisfied, and praising. It is a picture of ordinary life resumed rather than of a record being sealed.

You are inside a promise that arrives after the naming rather than instead of it. Joel 2:26 says my people shall never be ashamed at the end of a chapter that describes the loss in full. It is the same Spirit, Romans 8:16 bearing witness with our spirit, who carries a promise like that into somebody who has closed a box.

What the psalmist asks about the years

There is a line in Psalm 71 written by somebody old enough to have a section of their own life they would rather not review.

Thou, which hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth. (Psalm 71:20)

Shalt bring me up again. Twice in one verse he uses the word again, which is a word about return to a former condition rather than about escape into a new one.

And he does not say the troubles were not troubles. He calls them great and sore and he attributes the showing of them without flinching from the sentence.

Which is what a person needs when a section of their life is closed. Not a reinterpretation of the years, which nobody can supply. A statement that a person can be brought up again with those years in their history rather than surgically removed from it.

You are brought up again with the years in your history rather than cut out of it. Psalm 71:20 says shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth without denying that the troubles were great and sore, and it is the Spirit of God, Titus 3:5 named in the renewing of the Holy Ghost, who does the quickening that verse describes.

What the trade in Isaiah actually is

There is one more line about this and it is about an exchange rather than a deletion.

To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. (Isaiah 61:3)

Beauty for ashes. Ashes are what is left of a thing that burned. They are not removed from the picture in that verse; they are the currency in a trade.

So the years are not being taken out of the album. They are the thing being handed over, and something is being handed back, and the transaction requires the ashes to be brought rather than hidden.

A closed box is ashes nobody has brought anywhere.

You are holding the currency for a trade rather than evidence for a case. Isaiah 61:3 gives beauty for ashes, which requires the ashes rather than removing them. It is His Spirit, named in the first verse of that chapter as being upon Him for exactly this, who carries the exchange out.

And if the box has become part of something heavier than a box, say it out loud to a person: a doctor, a counselor, a pastor you trust, or the 988 crisis line, which answers every hour there is. Removing six years of your own life is a large act and it is worth doing the reopening with somebody in the room.

The verse people misuse, read carefully

There is a verse people say to somebody in this position, and it is usually said badly.

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

It does not say all things are good. It says they work together, which is a manufacturing word, and it describes a process with an output rather than a reassessment of the inputs.

So nobody is being asked to look at those years and call them good. The years were what they were and she is not required to relabel one photograph.

What is claimed is that they are being worked, along with everything else, toward something, and that the working is somebody else's job and is going on whether or not she can look at the box.

You are not asked to relabel anything, and Romans 8:28 describes a process rather than a verdict. Romans 8:28 says all things work together for good rather than saying all things are good. It is the Holy Spirit, Romans 8:26 named just above it as helping our infirmities, who is at work in the same passage.