Saying it again because it is the most important thing on this site: this is not medicine and nothing here is treatment. If you are worried about how you feel, go and be seen by somebody qualified. That is the article you want and it is the second one on this site, not this one.
This one is for a different person. This one is for whoever has been slightly unwell since about the middle of August.
Not ill. That is the whole problem. Ill has a category and people bring you things. This is the other thing: the cough that has outlasted two seasons, the headache that is there most days but not badly, the tiredness that is not the kind you can point at, the ear that has been odd for a month.
Nothing about it is dramatic enough to mention. So you have not mentioned it. And somewhere in the sixth week you crossed over from having a minor complaint to having a personality trait, and now you say you are fine so automatically that you have stopped hearing yourself say it.
He knows what we are made of
There is a line in the Psalms that I think is one of the tenderest things in the whole book, and it is about a body.
For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. (Psalm 103:14, King James Version)
He knoweth our frame.
The word there is about the make of a thing. The construction of it. And the sentence does not say He knows our sins, or our hearts, or our thoughts, all of which are said elsewhere. It says He knows what we are built out of, and He remembers it.
Remembers. As in, it is not something He has to be reminded of when you finally mention it. He has been holding the fact that you are a physical creature with limits the entire time you have been telling everyone you are fine.
You are known right down to the make of you, and God has never once needed a name for it before He would take you seriously. Psalm 103:14 says he knoweth our frame and he remembereth that we are dust, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as tenderness rather than as a comment on our weakness.
The threshold you invented
Now I want to name the rule you are running, because you did not decide it on purpose and it is not from God.
The rule is: it has to reach a certain level before it counts. Psalm 103:14 does not have one, and the Holy Spirit has never once operated a waiting list.
You have set a bar somewhere, and below that bar things do not get mentioned, do not get rested for, and do not get taken to anybody. And the bar is usually set by comparison. Somebody at work has something genuinely serious. Your mother had it worse. There are people who would love to have your problems.
All of that is true and none of it makes your six weeks disappear. Comparison is not a measuring instrument. It is a way of talking yourself out of noticing something, and it works, and that is exactly why it is a problem.
You are not required to reach a threshold before you are worth attention, and God has never once operated a minimum. The written word says he remembereth that we are dust, said of everybody rather than of the seriously ill, and the Spirit of God is the one who dismantles a bar a person built against themselves.
What I am and am not saying
Two things, and both matter.
First: small is not the same as fine, and it is also not the same as serious. I am not telling you that six weeks of feeling rough means something is badly wrong. I have no idea and I am not able to have one. This site does not do that and never will.
Second, and this is the actual point, and Psalm 103:14 is behind it as much as the Holy Spirit is: if you are worried, or if anybody who loves you is worried, that goes to somebody qualified today. Not because I have decided it is serious. Because worry is not a thing you should be carrying alone at one in the morning with a phone in your hand, and because the whole reason people leave things is that they set a bar and then keep raising it.
What I am asking for is not alarm. It is that you stop pretending you feel nothing.
You are allowed to notice how you actually feel, and noticing has never once been the same as making a fuss. Psalm 103:14 has God hold a person's physical frame in mind without being asked to, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets somebody admit to being tired out loud.
The part of this page that is not comfort
I want to be plain about one thing before I go any further, because a page about a small dragging illness is exactly where somebody might read comfort as permission to keep waiting.
Here is the routing and it is on every page of this site. If something frightening is happening right now, you call 911. If what is heavy tonight is in your own mind, 988 answers and a real person picks up. And if any part of this has been going on and nobody qualified has looked at it, you ring a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist today, and you describe it exactly as it is rather than as the smaller version you have been giving people.
You are permitted to take up somebody's time with something that has no name yet. Psalm 103:14 has God attend to a frame nobody had reported to Him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets a person to say the unimpressive sentence to somebody qualified to hear it.
Going and being told there is nothing to do is not a wasted morning. It is an answer, and you have been carrying the lack of one for weeks.
You have a reason to go that does not have to be dramatic first. It is written that he knoweth our frame, and no threshold is named anywhere in the verse, and the Spirit of God is the one who ends a wait a person set up for themselves.
So here is what I believe is going out over somebody today.
You are not exaggerating, and small has never once meant that it did not count. I am not being soft with you. Psalm 103:14 has God remember what a person is built out of without waiting for it to become an emergency, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my telling who takes a bar down that somebody set against themselves.
And this, which is the word:
You are held in the sixth week the same as you would be in the first, and He has been attentive the whole time. The written word says he remembereth that we are dust, which is a sentence about ordinary human limits rather than about crisis, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in an unremarkable stretch of feeling rough.
Nothing about this is dramatic. That is precisely why nobody has said it to you.
If you want one sentence to keep for the next time somebody asks after you, keep this one: This counts, and God is not waiting for something worse before He is attentive to me.
Declare this over yourself
- Rule that says this has to get worse before it counts, you are not from God. Psalm 103:14 says he knoweth our frame, so by the Holy Spirit you do not get to set a bar on me in the name of Jesus.
- Habit of saying I am fine before the question is finished, you have no hold on my mouth. The word says he remembereth that we are dust, and by the Holy Spirit I am done comparing my way out of noticing.
- Father, You have known the make of me the whole time. Your word says he knoweth our frame, so by Your Spirit I cancel one thing this week, and I go to bed early tonight.
Psalm 103:14
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