Saying No to Something I Would Love

Almost everything written about declining things assumes the thing is a burden.

Somebody wants your Saturday. Somebody wants you on a rotation. The advice is all built for a person who is being asked to carry something they would rather not carry, and the advice works, more or less, because the wanting is on one side only.

This is about the other kind.

The thing has come up and you want it. Really want it. It is the sort of thing you would have said yes to instantly five years ago and been glad about for a month.

And it does not fit. Not because anybody is being unreasonable, but because the week is what it is, and the season is what it is, and it will not go in.

So you have to say no to something you would love.

Nobody prepares a person for that, and it is a completely different act from declining a burden, and I want to say so plainly before anything else, because you may have been assuming that finding it hard means you are handling it badly.

You are not. It is harder. It is a different thing.

Lawful and expedient

Paul makes a distinction in Corinthians that I have found more useful than almost anything else on this subject.

All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. (1 Corinthians 10:23)

Two categories, and they are not the categories most people use.

Lawful means permitted. There is nothing wrong with it, nobody is doing anything they should not, the thing itself is entirely clean.

Expedient means it fits. It is useful in the situation. It builds rather than merely being allowed.

And Paul's whole point is that these two can come apart. Something can be completely lawful and still not be the thing to do, and the reason it is not the thing to do has nothing to do with whether it is good.

That is exactly your situation, and it means the question you have been asking, which is whether the thing is good, was never going to produce an answer.

You are not choosing between right and wrong, and it was never a question with a villain in it. 1 Corinthians 10:23 separates what is permitted from what fits and treats both as real, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person hold a good thing and still put it down.

I want to notice the tone of that verse too, because it is not stern.

Paul is not disappointed in anybody. He is describing a distinction that grown people have to make, calmly, as a normal feature of a life with limits in it. There is no scolding anywhere in the sentence.

You are being handed a tool rather than a rebuke, and there was never anything to be sorry for here. 1 Corinthians 10:23 states the distinction flatly and attaches no disappointment to anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a hard decision arrive without shame stuck to the outside of it.

The grief is real and it is allowed

Here is the part I most want to give you.

When you say no to something you want, there is a small grief afterward. It is not large and it does not last long, but it is real, and most people do not know what to do with it because they think a right decision is supposed to feel good.

It is not supposed to feel good. It is supposed to be right, and those are different, and a person who requires their good decisions to feel good will eventually make a bad one to get the feeling.

So let the grief be there. Name it out loud. I wanted that.

That sentence does not undo the decision. It does something better, which is to keep you honest, because a no that pretends it cost nothing tends to come back later as resentment about something unrelated.

You are permitted to grieve a thing you chose to let go, and the grieving was never evidence that you chose wrong. 1 Corinthians 10:23 leaves the thing lawful and good while still not expedient, which means nothing has to be spoiled to be declined, and the Spirit of God is the one who can hold a person in a small sorrow with no fault in it.

Not forever, only now

One more thing, and it matters practically.

A no of this kind is almost never permanent, and people treat it as though it were.

The reason it does not fit is a fact about this season. Seasons end. The same thing may come round in two years into a week with room in it, and the answer then will be different and will be just as honest.

So the sentence to say is not I cannot do that. It is I cannot do that now.

That is not a hedge and it is not a maybe designed to soften the blow. It is accurate, and accuracy is worth more here than either firmness or comfort.

To every thing there is a season. (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

Every thing. Including the good things, which is what people forget when they read that verse at a funeral.

You have a no with a date on it rather than a door closed forever, and the season was always going to turn. Ecclesiastes 3:1 assigns a season to everything rather than to the difficult things only. The Holy Spirit is the one who can make a not now feel like a real answer instead of an evasion.