It Just Did Not Work

The same words open every page on this site. This is not medicine. I have no clinical training, nothing on this page is treatment, and nothing I write ever stands in the place of a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist. If anybody in that house is unwell, ring somebody qualified today, before anything else on this page.

Now. It did not work.

That is the sentence. That is the whole of it, and I am not going to add anything to it for a minute, because I think the adding is what you are tired of.

Because here is what happens when you say it to people. Somebody tells you what it might be for. Somebody says something about a season. Somebody tells you about a person they know who had a similar thing and then a good outcome, which is meant kindly and lands like being handed somebody else's life.

And what you actually wanted, and could not ask for because there is no polite way, was for one person to say: that is awful, and to not follow it with anything.

He names them and the name is not complimentary

There is a sentence in Job addressed to the people who came to help, and it is one of the bluntest things anybody says in the book.

I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all. (Job 16:2, King James Version)

Miserable comforters. And what they had been doing was explaining. They had meaning for everything. They had frameworks. They had a reason for every part of it, and they offered those reasons at length while a man sat in front of them with his life in pieces.

And the book does not take their side. It records his sentence about them and lets it stand.

You are permitted to find the explaining unbearable, and that has never once made you ungrateful. Job 16:2 has the man being comforted say plainly that the comfort is not working, and it goes into the record without correction, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives a tired person permission to say so.

And these were not bad men. They came. They sat with him for a week without speaking, which is more than most people manage. They only became miserable comforters when they started explaining.

You have never once needed the meaning in order to get through the day. The Spirit of God is the one who separates company from commentary, and it is written that the objection was to the many such things rather than to the men being present.

Why people do it, and what to ask for instead

Let me be practical, because you will see these people again this week.

They explain because silence in the face of something unresolved is genuinely hard, and because saying nothing feels like doing nothing, and because most people would rather be useful than be present.

That is not malice. It is discomfort with an unfixed thing, and it comes out as meaning.

You are being handed explanations by people who cannot bear a silence. Job 16:2 draws a line between presence, which those men managed for seven days, and speech, which is where it went wrong, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets somebody see the difference without turning against anybody.

And there is something to ask for, and asking is allowed. You can tell a person what you want. Say: I am going to tell you something, and I would like you not to say anything back.

Most people are relieved to be told. They have been guessing.

You were never obliged to accept whatever comes, and asking for what helps has never once been rude. The Spirit of God is the one who gets somebody to name what they actually need out loud, and what is written records a plain complaint about unhelpful speech without a word of rebuke for the man who made it.

The plain routing, which is not a lesson either

Here is the part of this page that is not comfort, and it is the only instruction here.

If something is happening right now that frightens you, that is 911, and nothing on this page delays that. If the heavy thing today is in your own mind, 988 answers, and a real person picks up. And whatever did not work, the situation underneath it still goes to a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist today.

You are able to say the plain thing to somebody trained, and they have never once needed you to make it mean anything. Job 16:2 objects to the speeches rather than to the help, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves a person from being explained at to being attended to.

That is one of the quiet mercies of a clinical room, by the way. Nobody in it is going to tell you what this is for. They will ask what happened and write it down.

You have somewhere to take this where nobody has ever once offered a framework. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in a plain appointment, and what is written puts the objection on the many such things and never on the going.