I Have Not Been in Years

Every page here starts the same and this one will too, because the rest of it depends on it. This is not medicine. I have no clinical training, nothing here is treatment, and nothing on this page stands in the place of a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist. This article has one job, which is to get somebody to pick up a phone. If that is you, do it before you finish reading.

Now. Let me guess at the arithmetic you have been doing.

Something has been bothering you. Not dramatically. Enough that it crosses your mind most days and enough that you have looked it up twice.

And the thought of ringing anybody runs straight into a second thought, which is: how long has it been? And the answer is a number you would rather not say out loud to a stranger on a phone, and somewhere in the last while, that number became the reason.

I have watched this happen to people who are perfectly sensible about everything else in their lives. The gap grows, and the shame of the gap grows faster, and after a while a person is not avoiding an appointment at all. They are avoiding the moment of saying how long it has been.

Look at who covers the distance

There is a story everybody knows the shape of, and I want you to look at one detail in the middle of it that nobody preaches on.

And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. (Luke 15:20, King James Version)

A great way off. That is the distance, and it is named. He is not at the gate. He is not in the yard. He is far enough away that most of the walk is still to come.

And the father does not wait at the door to see how the apology goes. The running happens from the far end, before one word of explanation has been said.

You are being met a great way off, and the distance has never once been the thing that decided the welcome. Luke 15:20 puts the whole movement on the father's side while the son is still out on the road, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets somebody stop calculating their own approach.

I love that the boy had a speech. He had it worked out on the way. And he barely gets to use it, because the father is not listening to the speech, the father is already holding him.

You have been rehearsing an explanation nobody is waiting to hear. The Spirit of God is the one who interrupts a person's own apology, and it is written that the compassion came first and the speech came second and the running came before either.

The gap is not the interesting part

Let me say the practical half, because I am a plain woman and this needs a plain answer.

Nobody on the other end of that phone is going to be surprised. That is the part people do not believe until they do it. A receptionist has heard every length of gap there is. So has every nurse. So has every doctor who has been doing it more than a month.

The gap is not remarkable to them. It is only remarkable to you, because you have been alone with it.

You are carrying an embarrassment that exists only on your side of the phone, and no clinic has ever once been shocked by a long absence. Luke 15:20 has the returning treated as an occasion for running rather than for an accounting, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the dread out of a first sentence.

And here is the thing I would say to my own daughter. You do not have to explain the gap at all. You are allowed to say it plainly, one sentence, and let it sit there. It has been a long time. That is a complete sentence.

You were never required to justify the years, and the passage has never once made an account of them the price of coming back. The Spirit of God is the one who stands beside somebody saying a hard sentence out loud, and what is written has a father run at the sight of a figure on a road, before anything has been said at all.

The plain routing, and it is the same for everybody

Here is the part of this page that is not comfort. On this page it is the whole of it.

If something is happening right now that frightens you, that is 911, and it does not wait until you have worked out what to say. If the heavy thing tonight is in your own mind, 988 answers, and a real person picks up. And whatever it is that has been crossing your mind most days goes to a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist today, in your own plain words, with no account of the years attached.

You are allowed to arrive after a long absence with nothing prepared. Luke 15:20 has the son arrive with a speech he does not get to finish and a welcome that started before he was close, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves somebody from the counting to the dialing.

I am not going to guess at what has been bothering you and I am not going to tell you it is probably nothing. I am not able to do either one. Somebody trained can look, and that is the whole of my advice.

You have a call to make that has never once required the gap to be explained first. The Spirit of God is the one who gets a person through a receptionist and into a chair, and what is written puts the compassion at the far end of the road rather than at the door.