I Have Already Written The Bad Version

Twice this week.

The first time was Tuesday night, lying there at about half past one with the heating clicking. You went through the whole thing. The phone call, the words they would use, which room you would be standing in when it came, who you would ring first, what you would say to her.

The second time was Thursday, in the car, at a red light, and that one had more detail in it than the first.

You are not catastrophizing. I want to use the right word for this because the wrong word has been used on you before, probably by somebody who meant well.

You are drafting.

There is a difference. Catastrophizing is a mind spinning out of control. What you do is deliberate and orderly and it has a purpose, and the purpose is that when the actual call comes, you will already have been there, and you will handle it, and nobody will have to look after you.

You have been doing this since you were young. Something arrived once with no warning and it went through you like weather through a fence, and you decided, somewhere around then, that you would never be surprised again.

Let me say something before we go one step further.

I am not telling you off.

There is no fault in this and I am not going to hand you a lecture about worry. You have almost certainly had that lecture from somebody who has never lain awake at half past one drafting a phone call, and it did nothing except add shame to a thing that was already tiring.

I am saying I know you did it twice this week. That is all.

A heart that is fixed

Here is a line about a man who receives bad news, and I want you to see that the verse takes for granted that bad news arrives.

He shall not be afraid of evil tidings: his heart is fixed, trusting in the LORD.Psalm 112:7

It does not say he shall not receive evil tidings. It does not promise that the news is good. Evil tidings are in the sentence, treated as an ordinary feature of a life.

The whole weight of the verse is on two words: heart is fixed.

Fixed is a word about being fastened down. It is what you do to a thing that would otherwise move when something hits it. The verse is not describing a man who does not feel the news. It is describing a man whose footing does not slide when the news lands, and those are different things, and only one of them is available to anybody.

So here it is, said directly to you, wherever you are sitting.

You are fastened to something that does not move when the phone goes. Not one day, not once you learn to stop drafting, not when your sleep improves. Right now, on the second day after the second draft, you are the man in verse seven, and the verse never once required him to stop feeling the weight of a thing. That is not my comfort to you. That is what is written, and it is His Spirit who takes a written line and lands it on a real man in a real week.

Now, why does the drafting not work?

And I want to be careful, because it does work, partly, and it is not honest to pretend otherwise. Rehearsal really does take some of the shock out of a moment. Nobody is imagining that.

But look at what it costs to buy that.

It costs Tuesday night. It costs the red light on Thursday. It costs the eleven days between now and the actual news, and if the news turns out fine, you do not get those days back, and nobody ever hands them back to you.

And here is the thing that finished me when I finally saw it in myself: the rehearsals do not accumulate. Drafting it twice does not make you twice as ready. The tenth one does nothing that the first one did not already do.

And hear this, because it is settled rather than pending. You are held when the news is good and held when it is not, and the fastening was done long before this week's drafts. The word says his heart is fixed, and fixed is a past participle about something somebody else did to it, and it is His Spirit who carries a written promise into a real chest at half past one in the morning.

You cannot pre pay for grief. It is not a thing that can be paid in advance and nobody has ever managed it.