I Have Been a Disappointment

It is not a thought. He wants to be precise about this because he has tried to explain it twice and both times it came out sounding like self pity, which it is not.

It is a fact he holds, the way he holds his own date of birth.

Yaakov is forty seven. If you asked him to defend it he could, and it would take about four minutes and it would be entirely accurate: the degree he did not finish, the business, his sister's wedding, the eight years his mother was ill, and what he was doing during a good deal of that. He is not making any of it up. He has never made any of it up.

He stopped drinking three years ago. And what he has found is that the drinking was never the source of it and never really the anaesthetic either; it was the volume knob. Turned down, the fact was still there, quietly, in the background, the way it has been since he was about eleven years old.

And now the knob is gone and the fact plays at whatever volume it likes, most days, in the ordinary gaps: driving, waiting for a kettle, lying awake at ten to three.

He has not told anybody. Not his wife, who would argue with him, and being argued with about it is worse than carrying it, because then he has to defend it and defending it makes it stronger.

You know that fact. It might not be disappointment. It might be a different word. But it is not a mood, it is a verdict, and it has been in place for so long that you no longer experience it as an opinion.

You are met at the depth the thing actually goes, and you were never being handled by somebody who thought it was shallow. The psalm says deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts, all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me, and it does not minimize one inch of it; that is exactly what stands written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that honesty available to a man lying awake at ten to three.

Deep calleth unto deep

Let me be careful, because I am not going to do the thing your wife does, and I am not saying that as a criticism of her.

I am not going to argue with your list. I do not know your list. And if I told you from a page that you were being too hard on yourself, you would file me with everybody else who has said it, and you would be right to, because a stranger cannot know and it is exactly the kind of thing people say when they want a conversation to end.

And I am not going to tell you that solving this is what will keep you standing.

Here is what I am going to do. I am going to show you a psalm where a man does something other than agree with himself.

Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.Psalm 42:7

That is not a small description. He is not saying he is a bit low. Deep calling to deep is the sound of one abyss answering another, and the waves are not near him or around him, they are gone over him. The psalm makes no attempt to reduce the size of what it is describing.

You are inside something Scripture describes at full size, and you were never being asked to make it smaller before it could be brought. That is what stands written in Psalm 42, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that honesty land on a man who has been quietly holding a verdict since he was eleven.

And then, in the same psalm, twice, he does the thing that changes everything. He turns and speaks to himself.

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him.Psalm 42:11

He does not agree with his soul and he does not shout it down. He asks it a question, out loud, in the second person, and then he tells it where to put its hope. He is not pretending the deep is not deep. He is refusing to let the deep be the only voice in the room.

You are able to speak to your own soul rather than only listen to it, and you were never obliged to accept its account as the finding. Scripture has the psalmist addressing himself in the vocative, and the Holy Spirit is the one who puts that move into a man's hands at ten to three in the morning.

And notice what he says next: for I shall yet praise him. Yet. That word does not deny the current state. It concedes the present entirely and makes a claim about a later one, and it is spoken from the bottom, in the dark, with no evidence.

You are able to say the word yet from the bottom, and you were never required to have the evidence in hand first. The written word puts I shall yet praise him inside the same psalm as the waves and the billows, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man hold both.

And the plain thing, said the way this site says it in every article and means it. A verdict a man has carried since he was eleven is worth taking to somebody trained to sit with it, and a counselor is not a criticism of your wife or your family. Your doctor, a friend, the room where men sit and say true things out loud on a Tuesday. That is God's kindness with a face on it and reaching for it takes nothing away from anything.