The Fourth Time I Picked Up the Phone

Same start as every page on this site, because it is the sentence the rest of it rests on. 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. This article has one job: one phone call. If it is yours, make it before you get to the end.

Now. The phone has been in your hand four times this week.

Twice on Monday. Once on Wednesday, and you got as far as the ringing tone and hung up before anybody answered, which is somehow the worst version.

And today you picked it up, looked at the screen for a while, and put it face down on the counter.

And what has quietly happened over those four times is that the subject has changed. It used to be about the appointment. Now it is about you, and specifically about what kind of person cannot make a four minute phone call, and you have started answering that question in a way that is not true and is not kind.

The instruction is smaller than the one you gave yourself

There is a verse everybody can half quote, and the thing I want you to notice is how modest it actually is.

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. (Philippians 4:6, King James Version)

Let your requests be made known. That is the whole instruction. Not resolve it. Not stop feeling it. Not become a person who is calm about things. Say what you want out loud to somebody who is listening.

And it says in every thing, which is a phrase that refuses to rank subjects into the ones that qualify and the ones that are too small.

You are permitted to bring a four minute phone call to God without apologizing for its size. Philippians 4:6 puts in every thing right in the middle of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person take a small stuck thing seriously.

That verse is often read at people as an instruction not to feel anxious, which is a thing nobody can obey by deciding to. Read the mechanics again. The doing part is making a request known. The feeling is not what is being commanded.

You have been trying to obey a verse that never asked you to feel differently first. The Spirit of God is the one who separates an instruction from a mood, and it is written that the requests get made known, which is an action a shaking person can perform.

Four attempts is not four failures

Let me say the thing I would say if I were sitting on that counter with you.

That phone has been picked up four times this week. That is not four failures. That is four occasions on which a genuinely frightened person went and got the phone anyway.

The story running the other way says four proofs that something is wrong. But look at the actual behavior. Something keeps walking back to that counter. Four times, the fear was not stronger than the person holding it.

You are the person who keeps picking it back up, and the picking up has never once been the part that failed. Philippians 4:6 asks for the request to be made known and says nothing about how many attempts it takes, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets somebody count their own tries as tries.

And the fifth one is not going to feel different. That is the part nobody says. The fifth time will feel exactly like the other four, right up until somebody answers, and then it will be over.

You were never going to get a version of this that feels easy, and no morning has ever once arrived with the calm attached. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in the ringing tone, and what is written asks for the making known rather than for a steady hand.

The plain routing, which is what the phone is actually for

Here is the part of this page that is not comfort, and on this article it is the only assignment.

If something is happening right now that frightens you, that is 911, and it does not wait for a better moment. If the heavy thing tonight is in your own mind, 988 answers, and a real person picks up, and it is a person and not a recording. And the appointment you have picked up and put down four times goes to a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist today.

You are allowed to hand them a first sentence that comes out wrong, and nobody on that line has ever once needed it to be tidy. Philippians 4:6 has the requests made known without one word about how well they are worded, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is on the line with somebody whose voice is not steady.

Here is the practical trick that works. Do not plan the sentence. Plan the first four words and let them ask the rest. I need an appointment. That is it. They are trained to take it from there and they do it a hundred times a day.

You have one short sentence to say and the rest of it belongs to somebody else. The Spirit of God is the one who carries a person through the four seconds after somebody answers, and what is written makes the saying the whole of the assignment.