The Hour After They Go Down

The stair creaks on the fourth step from the bottom and Danielle has learned to step over it, and by twenty five past eight both of them are down and the house makes a sound it makes at no other time of day.

It is not silence. There is the fridge, and somebody's television two doors along, and a car going past every so often. It is the particular quiet of a house that has just had two children switched off in it. The toys are in the basket. The plates are done. The bag for tomorrow is by the door with the reading folder in it. There is a lamp on, and the hallway light left low because the little one still wants it, and one hour before Danielle can reasonably go to bed herself.

She sits down on the couch.

And this, right here, is the hardest hour of her day, and it has been for two years, and she has never once said that out loud to another human being, because how do you say it? Everything is fine. The children are fine. The house is fine. She is sitting down. That is the whole problem: she is sitting down, and she has been moving since six in the morning, and moving is the only thing that has been holding the day together.

The hour after they go down used to have something in it. It had a shape and a sound and it made the sitting down survivable, and it is not there anymore, and what is there instead is a lamp and a fridge humming and sixty minutes of being alone with herself.

At half past nine she goes up. Nothing happened. Nothing has happened for a long time.

You know that hour. It might not be children. It might be the hour after the last patient, or the hour after you close, or the hour after the phone stops. All day you were needed and now you are not, and the not being needed is louder than any of it was.

You are not off duty from God at half past eight, and you were not being watched only while you were useful. The psalm says be still and know that I am God, and it is spoken as an instruction rather than a suggestion, which means the stillness is His plan and not your failure; that is exactly what stands written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a command a woman can obey on a couch in a quiet living room.

Be still, and know

Let me say the ache out loud first, because you will not hear it named anywhere else and hearing it named is half of what it needs.

You are not sad. You are not in crisis. You have simply been in motion for fourteen hours and motion is what has been holding you together, and when the motion stops the whole day arrives at once, in a room with a lamp in it, with nobody to hand any of it to. And there is no vocabulary for that. If you tell somebody the hardest part of your day is sitting down, they will hear it as ingratitude, so you say nothing, and saying nothing is its own weight on top of the first one.

Here is what the psalm says, and I want you to look at who the sentence is aimed at.

Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.Psalm 46:10

Read what comes before it in that psalm. The earth is being removed. The mountains are being carried into the middle of the sea. The waters roar and are troubled. And into that, God says: be still. Not because the situation is calm. Because He is not.

The word behind be still carries the sense of letting the hands drop. Cease. Let go. It is spoken to people whose hands are full and whose arms are tired, and the command is not to work harder at resting. It is to stop holding.

You have been commanded to stop holding, and you were never the one keeping the day together. That is written into Psalm 46, and the Holy Spirit is the one who turns let your hands drop from a lovely idea into something a woman can actually do at twenty five past eight with her shoes off.

Now look at what God says He is doing while you are still. I will be exalted. Twice. He does not say you will feel better, and He does not say the room will stop being quiet. He says the exalting is His job and He will be doing it. So the stillness is not you doing nothing while nothing happens. It is you stopping while He works, which is an entirely different arrangement, and it is the only arrangement in which a person who has been going since six in the morning has anything left.

You are still inside a room where God is at work, and you were never asked to keep the house standing by force of will. Scripture says I will be exalted, twice, in the first person, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a fact you can lean back into rather than a line you agree with.

And there is one more thing in that psalm, and it is in the verse right before. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved. The city in that psalm does not hold itself together. It is held. So the quiet at half past eight is not a room where the support has been withdrawn. It is a room where you have finally stopped adding to something that was already being carried.

You are held in the hour when you stop, and you were being held in all the hours you thought your own running was doing it. The written word says God is in the midst of her, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a living room with a lamp in it the middle of that sentence.

And the plain word, which belongs in every article on this site: the friend you could text at half past eight, the doctor, the counselor, the group with the folding chairs, all of it is God's kindness with a face and a name on it. Reaching for it is not a weaker faith. It has always been one of the ways He holds a person up.