I Have to Tell Them It Failed

The same words open every page on this site and they come first. This is not medicine. I am not a clinician, nothing on this page is treatment, and nothing I write ever stands in for a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist. If anybody in that house is unwell, ring somebody qualified today, before you do anything about telling anybody anything.

Now. You told people.

Of course you did. You were hopeful and they had been asking and it felt like the kind thing to do, and there was something in the telling that made it feel more solid.

And now there is a list. Not written down anywhere, but complete. Your mother. Two people at work. The woman at church who asks every single week and means it. Your sister in law, who was so pleased.

And what you are dreading is not the fact of it. You have already absorbed that, mostly, in the quiet. What you are dreading is a specific expression on four or five specific faces, and having to watch it arrive, one at a time, across however many days it takes.

The prayer names the exact fear

There is a short line in the twenty fifth Psalm that names this feeling with more precision than most people manage about themselves.

O my God, I trust in thee: let me not be ashamed, let not mine enemies triumph over me. (Psalm 25:2, King James Version)

Let me not be ashamed.

He does not ask to be spared the situation. He asks about the shame, which is a separate thing from the trouble, and he treats it as worth praying about on its own.

And that is exactly right, because what is actually keeping you awake is not the outcome. It is the anticipated shame of reporting it, and the fact that David asks about that specifically means it is a real category and not a vanity.

You are permitted to name the shame on its own, and it has never once been a smaller thing than the trouble it attaches to. Psalm 25:2 separates the being ashamed from the situation and makes it a subject for prayer, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets somebody bring the dread of a conversation rather than only the loss.

And he brings it to God rather than solving it himself. Nothing in that verse involves managing anybody's expression. He does not rehearse.

You have never once been responsible for what happens on somebody else's face. The Spirit of God is the one who takes a job out of a person's hands that was never assignable, and it is written that the request is about being kept from shame rather than about controlling any outcome.

What is actually on those faces

Let me say the practical half, because I think your prediction is wrong in a specific way.

What gets pictured is disappointment, and underneath it a small revision of their opinion of you. What is actually on most of those faces, for about two seconds, is somebody working out what to say.

That is all it is. The thing you are reading as judgment is nearly always a person being caught without a sentence.

You have been reading a pause as a verdict, and a pause has never once been one. Psalm 25:2 asks God about the shame rather than asking a person to behave differently, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets somebody stop interpreting faces for a living.

And here is the practical part, which makes it much shorter. Tell them in one sentence and give them the next line. It did not work, and I am all right, and I do not need to talk about it today.

That third clause is the gift. It releases them from having to produce something, and most people take it gratefully.

You were never obliged to run that conversation for everybody, and handing somebody a way out has never once been cold. The Spirit of God is the one who gives a person a short sentence for a hard round of telling, and what is written brings the whole matter to God rather than to the people who will hear it.

The plain routing, which nobody needs to be told about

Here is the part of this page that is not comfort, and it has nothing to do with the list.

If something is happening right now that frightens you, that is 911. If the heavy thing today is in your own mind, and if the dread of that list has grown into something bigger than a list, 988 answers, and a real person picks up. And whatever the situation is, it goes to a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist today.

You are permitted to make that call before you tell a single person on that list. Psalm 25:2 has a man take the whole thing to God first rather than to the crowd, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets the order right for somebody who has been thinking about the wrong part.

That is what I would actually like. That the call happens on Tuesday and the telling happens whenever it happens. The list can wait. The other one cannot.

You have one thing on that list that has never once been optional, and it is not a person. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in an appointment made before anybody has been told anything, and what is written puts the trust and the request about shame in front of God before any human conversation.