Everybody Moved On And He Assumed It Was Him

Three of them in about eighteen months, and each one has an explanation.

One moved for work, genuinely, and the distance is real and they still speak twice a year and it is warm both times.

One had a period of enormous difficulty in his own family and went quiet with more or less everybody, and has since come partly back into circulation but not with him particularly.

The third is the one there is no explanation for. Nothing happened. It simply thinned, over about a year, in a way that neither of them ever named, and now it is two men who nod.

Any one of those on its own is a normal thing that happens to everybody.

Three of them in eighteen months is a run.

And what a man does with a run, and he has done it thoroughly, is look for the common factor, because that is what a sensible person does with a pattern.

There is exactly one thing present in all three cases.

So he has concluded, without ever writing it down, that it must be him. That there is something about him at close range, something that does not show up in the first year, and that three separate men noticed it independently.

He cannot name it. He has tried. That is the part that has driven him hardest, that he can be certain there is a defect and be completely unable to identify it, and he has gone through conversations from four years ago looking for the moment.

And what he does now is withdraw first.

Not dramatically. He is warm and he is present at everything and he cooks for people. He just does not go the last step any more, and when a friendship starts to move toward the close range where the defect supposedly lives, he becomes very slightly busier, and it is so subtle that nobody has ever noticed.

He is saving them the trouble. That is genuinely how he thinks about it.

And you have a run. Two, or three, in a short stretch, and you have found the one factor common to all of them, and you have started leaving first.

Everyone deserted me, and the Lord stood by me

There is a passage near the end of Second Timothy where Paul writes about a legal hearing, and he does two things in three sentences that almost nobody does together.

First he says it plainly.

At my first defense no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me.

He does not soften it. He does not explain them away, and he names it as desertion, which is a hard word and he chooses it deliberately.

Then he does not turn it into a statement about himself.

But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me.2 Timothy 4:17

Nowhere does he say: so there must be something about me. Nowhere does he search for the common factor, and he had a much better case for it than you do, because he had a long history of people leaving him and it is all over his letters.

You are allowed to name a run of departures without converting it into a verdict about yourself. It is written that all deserted me, but the Lord stood by me and strengthened me (2 Timothy 4:16-17), and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that second sentence something a man can stand on rather than a pious addition to a complaint.

Now the common factor argument, because it is worth dismantling on its own terms.

You are the one thing present in all three cases. That is true, and it is also true that you are the one thing present in every good thing that has happened to you, and in every friendship that has lasted, and in the whole of your life.

Being present in all instances of a set is not evidence about the cause of anything. It is what being yourself means.

And notice the actual explanations you already have. One man moved. One man's family fell apart. One thinned for no reason anybody could name, which is the most ordinary thing that happens between adult men and is essentially never about a defect.

You have three separate explanations and you have set them aside in order to keep one theory that explains all three at once. Scripture says the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it (Jeremiah 17:9), and it is the Holy Spirit who tells a man the truth about himself, which is a service his own mind has been failing to provide.

And the thing that has driven you hardest: certainty of a defect you cannot name.

That combination is worth looking at directly, because it is the signature of a conclusion that was reached before the evidence.

If there were a real defect, it would have a name. Three men who noticed something independently would have produced at least one description between them, and one of them would have said something, and the one who thinned would have had a reason he could have given if asked.

There is no name because there is no finding. There is a run, and a mind that could not tolerate a run without a cause.

You have been searching for the name of something that does not exist, which is why four years of searching has produced nothing. It is written that God is greater than our heart, and He knows everything (1 John 3:20), and it is the Holy Spirit who is the One who convicts specifically, by name, about actual things, and He has said nothing about this in four years.

And the withdrawing, which is now the only real problem in the whole account.

You go slightly busier when a friendship approaches close range. That is not saving anybody trouble. That is guaranteeing that no fourth friendship will ever get past the point where you believe the defect appears, which will then confirm the theory.

You are running a test that has been designed to pass, and you are free to stop running it. Scripture says a man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother (Proverbs 18:24), and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that closeness real, which is not a thing you have to arrange or protect anybody from.