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# She is on the list
- URL: https://www.rubyskitchentable.com/she-is-on-the-list/
- Published: 2026-09-17T10:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-17T10:00:00.000Z
- Author: Ruby Hayes

*"The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desire of all who fear him; he also hears their cry, and saves them." — Psalm 145:18-19*

Hannah did not call back and I have decided not to make that mean anything.

That is a decision I have to make deliberately, at the table, in the morning, with the coffee. It is not a feeling I arrive at. It is a thing I choose on purpose because the other road is well worn and I know exactly where it goes.

The other road says: she did not call because of something. Because of the thing you said that time. Because of the way you were when she was nineteen. Because she is closer to the boy's father's people than to you. The other road is paved and downhill and I have walked it enough times to know every stone in it, and it always ends in the same place, which is me sitting here at seventy-seven years old building a case against myself out of scraps.

So: she did not call back. That is the whole fact. People do not call back for a hundred reasons and ninety-nine of them are that the week got away from them.

I put her on the list this morning the way I put her on the list every morning. Edna's hip, which is better. Pastor Holloway. The woman at church who has stopped saying how she is. Dan's knee, which he is not going to see anybody about. Caleb, who turned eight on Monday. Hannah.

I have prayed for Hannah every day for something like twenty years. I want to be honest about what that has looked like, because I think there are women reading this who have prayed the same prayer for the same length of time and are wondering whether they are doing it wrong.

It has not been twenty years of faithful, warm, believing prayer. It has been twenty years of asking, then some years of begging, then a stretch after Earl died where I said her name and nothing else because I had nothing else, and now this, whatever this is. Watching. Holding her up without instructions.

The psalm says the Lord is near to all who call on him in truth. In truth is the part that does the work. Not in eloquence. Not in confidence. In truth. And the truth this morning is: I do not know how to reach my daughter, and I am not sure she wants reaching, and I love her, and here she is again, Lord, same as yesterday.

That is a true prayer. It is not a good one. I have stopped believing there is a difference.

*Lord, she is on the list. She has always been on the list.*