The Second Opinion Nobody Went Back For

Every article on this site opens the same way, and I will not shorten it here. This is not medicine. I am not a clinician, nothing on this page is treatment, and nothing I write takes the place of a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist. This page exists for one phone call. If the call is yours, make it before you reach the end.

Now. Somebody told you to come back.

There was a conversation. It might have been a year ago or it might have been three. And at the end of it somebody said a version of: we should look at this again, come and see us, let us check it in a few months.

And you said yes. You meant it. And then the few months came and went, and the instruction slowly changed status in your head from a thing to be done into a thing that happened once.

That is the part I want to look at. Not that you refused. You never refused. It is that an unfinished instruction stopped feeling unfinished, and there is no alarm that goes off when that happens.

Ten men are told to go, and the going is the whole of it

There is a short scene in Luke that I want for one detail only, and the detail is about timing.

And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed. (Luke 17:14, King James Version)

Let me be exact about what I am taking from this, because I do not trade in promises about bodies and I am not about to start. I am not telling you what happens when you go back. Nobody honest can tell you that.

What I am pointing at is the shape. They are given an instruction that involves going somewhere, and the instruction is the entire content of what they are asked to do. Not understand it. Not feel ready. Go.

You were given an instruction that has never once expired. Luke 17:14 has men told to go and the whole of their obedience is the going, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets somebody pick a thing back up years after it was handed to them.

And they went before anything had changed. That is in the text and it is easy to read past. They set off in exactly the condition they were in when they were told.

You have been waiting to be in a different condition before you go back, and no instruction has ever once come with that attached. The Spirit of God is the one who moves a person who has not changed at all, and it is written that it happened as they went, which means the going came first.

An unfinished thing does not announce itself

Let me say the mechanism, because I think it explains a lot of lives.

A thing you decided against sits in your mind as a decision, and decisions have edges. You can find them, and argue with them, and change them.

A thing that just did not get finished has no edges. It goes soft. It stops being a task and becomes a vague sensation of having dealt with something once, and that sensation is almost impossible to notice, because noticing it is exactly what it prevents.

You are carrying something that has quietly changed shape, and the softness of it has never once meant it was handled. Luke 17:14 has an instruction with a plain action attached to it rather than a feeling, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives a soft thing its edges back.

And I would add this. In almost every case I know of, the person had no idea how long it had been. They would say a year and it was three. Time does that to unfinished things specifically.

You were never going to feel the length of it, and nobody has ever once been able to measure a gap from inside it. The Spirit of God is the one who puts a real date in front of somebody, and what is written turns an instruction into a thing done at a particular moment by particular people.

The plain routing, which is the instruction repeated

Here is the part of this page that is not comfort, and on this page it is simply the original instruction said again.

If something is happening right now that frightens you, that is 911, and that is not a follow up, that is now. If the heavy thing tonight is in your own mind, 988 answers, and a real person picks up. And the thing you were told to come back about goes to a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist today. Not for a new opinion. For the one that was already asked for.

You are picking up an instruction rather than starting something new, and that has never once required an explanation. Luke 17:14 has men go without understanding it and without waiting, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets somebody to make a call about a conversation they can barely date.

Say exactly that when they answer. I was told to come back and I never did. That sentence is not embarrassing to them, and it will be the most useful thing you say on the whole call.

You have one plain sentence that opens the whole thing, and the passage has never once made the going conditional on getting it right. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in a call somebody has owed for three years, and what is written puts the whole weight on a set of feet rather than on a state of mind.