Dear friend,
Ruth said, “Don’t urge me to leave you, and to return from following you, for where you go, I will go; and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts you and me.”
I got asked at a family dinner last month why I was still married to the same person after eight years, like it was a strange choice instead of the obvious one. Nobody asks that question kindly about singleness. They ask it like a problem waiting for you to solve it, and I watched a cousin field it three times before dessert. I have never had to sit under that particular weight, so I try not to talk like I understand it fully, because I don't.
I have been sitting with Ruth 1 this week, the part where Ruth chooses to stay with Naomi before there is any promise of a husband or a future attached to that choice. Nobody in that scene is solving Ruth's situation for her. She is just choosing loyalty and showing up, one ordinary day at a time, before any of the good part happens. It strikes me that the story lets her be unresolved for a long stretch without treating that as a flaw in her.
What is it like carrying other people's questions about your life when you did not ask them for their timeline?
A prayer
God, the questions land heavier than people mean them to. Steady her under the weight of other people's timelines, and let her feel how unhurried Your attention actually is toward her one ordinary day.