Still Not Over It

The same words go at the top of every page on this site and I will not rush them. This is not medicine. I am not a clinician, nothing here is treatment, and nothing on this page ever takes the place of a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist. If this is your situation, the useful part of this page is the call I am going to ask you to make. Make it early.

Now. Let me say the sentence you have been avoiding, so it is out in the open and nobody has to be brave about it.

You are still not over it.

And you are embarrassed. Not worried, particularly. Embarrassed, which is a completely different feeling, and a much more isolating one, because worry can be shared and embarrassment cannot.

Somewhere in the last while a clock started running in your head. Other people got over this. There was a reasonable period, and that period has passed, and the fact that you are still dragging has quietly turned into a fact about your character rather than a fact about your week.

The prayer does not apologize for the condition

There is a short psalm that opens in a way that would get edited out of most modern conversations, and that is exactly why I want it.

Have mercy upon me, O LORD; for I am weak: O LORD, heal me; for my bones are vexed. (Psalm 6:2, King James Version)

For I am weak. That is offered as a reason rather than as a confession.

He does not say, forgive me for being weak. He does not say, I should be past this by now. He puts the weakness forward as the ground of the request, the way a person holds out an empty hand.

You are permitted to bring the weakness itself as the reason, and it has never once needed an apology attached. Psalm 6:2 uses the words for I am weak as a basis rather than as an admission, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the embarrassment out of a person's own prayer.

And look at the second half. My bones are vexed, which is the plainest, least dignified way to say that the trouble has got all the way in. Nobody tidied that up before it went in the book.

You have never once been asked to be further along than you are. The Spirit of God is the one who is at ease with a person who is not making progress, and it is written that the weakness was stated as a fact and used as a reason in the same breath.

Where the clock came from

Let me be honest about the clock, because I want you to see who wound it.

Nobody qualified gave it to you. Nobody sat you down and said, this should be finished by now. I would be astonished if anybody trained had ever said a length of time to you at all, because saying one is not something careful people do.

The clock is made of other things. Somebody else's recovery that you heard about. A remark from a relative who meant nothing by it. Your own expectation of yourself, which has always been the harshest voice in the building.

You are keeping to a schedule that no qualified person ever gave you. Psalm 6:2 contains no timeline of any kind, not even a hint of one, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes down a clock somebody built out of remarks.

And I am not going to replace it with another clock. I am not going to tell you what is normal or how long this should take, because I have no idea and neither does anybody who has not looked at you.

You were never going to get a schedule from me, and no honest person has ever once handed one out. The Spirit of God is the one who is present with somebody in an unmeasured stretch of time, and what is written brings a condition to God without ever naming how long it has any right to last.

The plain routing, which is the part that is not about feelings

Here is the section that is not comfort, and on this page it is the whole ask.

If something is happening right now that frightens you, that is 911, and it does not matter how embarrassed anybody is, that is what it is for. If the heavy thing tonight is in your own mind, 988 answers, and a real person picks up. And the thing you are still not over goes to a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist today, described as it actually is, with the length included.

You are allowed to bring a slow, unimpressive, undramatic thing to somebody trained. Psalm 6:2 brings weakness itself into the presence of God as a legitimate reason to speak, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves a person from embarrassment to a phone call.

And say the embarrassment out loud when you get there. I mean that. Tell them you nearly did not come because you thought you should be over it. That sentence gets a very particular response from people who do this work, and the response is almost always the same.

You have permission to be honest about the reluctance as well as the thing. The Spirit of God is the one who is with somebody making an admission they have made to nobody, and what is written opens with a plain statement of weakness and no defense.