They Told Me It Would Work

Every page on this site opens with the same words. This is not medicine. I am not a clinician, nothing here is treatment, and nothing on this page ever stands in for a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist. If anybody in that house is unwell, ring somebody qualified today, before another line of this.

Now. Somebody told you it would work.

Not that it might. Not that they hoped. They said it with their whole chest, and they were not lying and they were not manipulating you, and that is precisely what makes this so difficult to put down.

They believed it. You could see that they believed it. And so when it did not work, the thing you were left holding was not only the outcome. It was a promise with a face on it, and the face belonged to somebody you love or respect or both.

And there is an anger about that, and it is real, and it has nowhere to go, because who do you take it to? The person meant well. Everybody says so. And so the anger goes in a drawer and stays warm in there for months.

God is on record against exactly this

There is a line in Jeremiah about people speaking comfort they had no authority to speak, and it is one of the sharpest sentences in the book.

They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace. (Jeremiah 6:14, King James Version)

Peace, peace, when there is no peace.

That is not aimed at cynics. It is aimed at people who said a comforting thing that was not theirs to say, with confidence, to somebody who was hurting, and the charge is that they treated a deep thing lightly.

And the verdict comes from God rather than from the person who was hurt, which means your instinct about it was not disloyal. It was correct.

You are not wrong to have noticed, and noticing has never once been ingratitude toward anybody. Jeremiah 6:14 puts a complaint about confident comfort into the record from God's own side, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a person that their instinct was right.

And I want to be careful, because this verse can be swung at people like a stick. The people around you are not the prophets of Jeremiah's day. They are your friends, saying the thing that was in the room.

You have never once been required to choose between loving them and being honest about it. The Spirit of God is the one who lets somebody hold both, and it is written that the charge is against the slight healing rather than against the people having any feeling at all.

Where to put the anger

Let me be practical, because a drawer full of warm anger is not sustainable and you know it.

The first thing is to name what the anger is actually about. It is not about them being wrong. Everybody is wrong about things. It is about being made to carry something as certain and then having to put it down alone.

The second thing is that the anger is not aimed at God, whatever it feels like at two in the morning. It is aimed at a sentence, said by a person, that was never His.

You are angry about a promise that has never once been one God made. Jeremiah 6:14 separates what God says from what people say confidently on His behalf, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an accusation off God that belonged to a conversation in a kitchen.

And the third thing, which is the hardest and the most freeing. You do not have to confront them. There is no obligation here. Saying it out loud to one other person, or to nobody, does most of the work.

You were never required to have that conversation, and putting it down has never once needed anybody's cooperation. The Spirit of God is the one who lets somebody set a thing down without a scene, and what is written brings the complaint before God rather than before the people who made it.

The plain routing, and nobody promises anything here

Here is the part of this page that is not comfort, and on this article I want to model the thing I am describing.

If something is happening right now that frightens you, that is 911. If the heavy thing today is in your own mind, 988 answers, and a real person picks up. And whatever this is goes to a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist today.

And I am not going to tell you what they will say. I do not know, and nobody who has not looked knows, and the whole subject of this page is people who spoke past what they knew.

You are being sent somewhere that has never once promised you an outcome. Jeremiah 6:14 objects to confident comfort rather than to plain speech, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves somebody toward people whose job is to look rather than to reassure.

That is one of the underrated mercies of a clinical room, actually. Nobody in it is going to say peace, peace. They will look, and then they will say what they can say and no more.

You have somewhere to go where nobody has ever once been paid to be confident. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in a room where somebody speaks carefully, and what is written puts the charge on the slight healing and never on the going.