My Sisters Sofa and the Cartoons On

The cartoons are on low and there are two children lying on the rug on their stomachs with their chins in their hands, and neither of them has turned round, and Denise is fairly certain they have been told not to.

She is on the sofa under a blanket that is not hers, in clothes that are hers, and there is a glass of water on the little table by her head that she did not put there and that is at least half gone, which means somebody has been making her drink it during the night.

Half past six on a Saturday morning. Her sister Angeline is in the kitchen, and Denise can hear the specific sound of somebody being quiet on purpose.

Last night happened, and it happened here, in front of everybody, which is the part that is sitting on her chest like a stone. Her nieces saw. Angeline saw. Angeline's husband drove.

And what is going on in her right now, before she has even sat up, is a full inventory: who saw what, what she said, what the girls will remember, what gets said at Christmas about this for the next twenty years. She is building the whole future out of one night, at half past six in the morning, lying still under a borrowed blanket.

One of the children on the rug laughs at something on the television. Neither of them turns round.

Let me stop the story and speak to you, sister, because if this is your morning you do not need me to be clever.

I am not going to ask you how long it had been. Nobody here is counting and nobody ever will. I am not going to talk about starting over. And I am not going to tell you what last night says about you, because it does not say that, and there will be no extra weight added by me today, not one gram.

You are still His and you were still His the whole way through last night, and the salvation was never the thing on the table. David asked God to restore unto him the joy of His salvation, and he asked for the joy back, not for the salvation back, because the second one was not in question; that is exactly what stands written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that distinction real for a woman lying under a borrowed blanket at half past six.

Restore unto me the joy

Let me name the actual weight, because it is not the same weight as waking up alone.

Waking up alone is between you and God. This is public. There are witnesses in the next room and two of them are seven and nine, and the thing crushing you this morning is not what you did, it is what you now are in the memory of people you love. And you are already building it: the Christmas remarks, the look on your sister's face for the next decade, the version of Auntie Denise that will exist in two little heads forever. That is what is happening on that sofa, and it is not madness, it is what anybody would be doing.

So look at what David wrote after the most publicly known failure in the Old Testament.

Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.Psalm 51:12

Look hard at what he asks for. He does not ask to be saved again. He does not ask to be let back in. He asks for the joy of the salvation to be restored, which is a request about his experience of a thing he still possesses. The salvation is not on the table in that prayer. It never comes up as a question. What has gone is his enjoyment of it, and that is what he asks God to hand back.

You are still in possession of the thing itself, and you were never in danger of losing it in a night. That is what stands written in Psalm 51, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that distinction land on a woman doing an inventory under a blanket.

And uphold me with thy free spirit. Uphold means hold up. It is the word for what you do for somebody who cannot stand unaided, and David asks for it out loud, in a psalm, knowing it would be sung by other people forever. He was not embarrassed to ask to be held up.

You are allowed to be held up this morning, and you were never expected to get through this on your own two feet. Scripture has the king of Israel asking to be upheld, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it possible for a woman to accept a plate of toast from her sister without dying of it.

And here is the thing about that psalm that I want in your hands. It became public. He wrote it and handed it to the chief musician, which means he gave it to the choir. The most humiliating thing that ever happened to him became a song other people sing when they need it, and God did not bury it, He published it. What was exposed did not stay a wound. It got turned into something that holds other people up.

You are not looking at a thing God is ashamed of, and you were never going to be quietly filed away because something got seen. The written word carries that psalm with the choir instruction still on it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does that same work with what happened in a front room last night.

And the plain thing, which I will say in every single article I write here. If your body is bad this morning, go and see a doctor today and tell them the truth. Do not make decisions about your body or about stopping on your own. That is not a lack of faith, that is looking after somebody God loves. And beyond that: your sister who is being quiet on purpose in that kitchen, the counselor, the helpline, the room where people sit in a circle, all of it is God's kindness with a face on it. Let them. Letting people help you today is not weakness, it is the first honest thing available.