The Thing I Have Never Said Out Loud

The dishwasher has been broken since June and she has not called anybody about it, and she has begun to suspect that she is not going to, because standing at that sink for eleven minutes at nine o'clock has become the most honest part of her day.

Erin is forty four. The house is quiet by nine because the boys are eleven and thirteen and have devices, and her husband works late on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the radio in the kitchen is on the station that plays songs from before either of them were born.

And every night, at about the third plate, it arrives.

It is one thing. One specific thing, from a long time ago, that she has never said out loud to a single human being. Not to her husband in nineteen years. Not to the counselor she saw for four sessions in her twenties and stopped seeing at exactly the point it would have come up. Not to God, particularly, because she has never known what she would even be asking for.

It used to have something over the top of it. Not a lot. A couple of glasses at nine, most nights, and the thing would still be there but it would be at a distance and slightly out of focus and she could get to bed.

She stopped in February. And the thing did not go away, and it did not get better, and it did not get worse either. It simply came into focus, and now it stands next to her at the sink for eleven minutes every night, and she washes dishes with it.

You know that hour. It might be a sink, a drive, the ten minutes before sleep. Something you have never said is waiting there, and it was always waiting there, and now there is nothing between you and it and nobody has told you what you are supposed to do about that.

You are already accounted for down to the smallest thing, and you were never required to report any of it first. The psalm says thou tellest my wanderings, put thou my tears into thy bottle, are they not in thy book, and the collecting is described as already done; that is exactly what stands written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a present fact at a kitchen sink at nine o'clock at night.

Put thou my tears into thy bottle

Let me name what is actually happening, and let me be careful, because this is a place where people rush to explain things and explaining is not what is needed.

I am not going to tell you what the thing is or where it came from or what it did to you. I do not know, and a page cannot know, and anybody who tells you they can diagnose you from a distance is selling something. And I am not going to tell you that dealing with it is what will keep you standing, because that would make your sobriety hang on a piece of work nobody has assigned you and you have enough on you already.

What I am going to say is much smaller and much more solid: the thing beside you at that sink is not unwitnessed.

Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?Psalm 56:8

Thou tellest my wanderings. Tellest means counts, numbers, keeps track of. Every aimless step, every stretch of going nowhere, counted by somebody. Not judged. Counted, the way you count something you are keeping.

You are counted rather than merely known about, and you were never wandering unobserved. That is what stands written in Psalm 56, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes counted mean something specific to a woman on plate three at nine o'clock.

Then the bottle. In the ancient world a tear bottle was a real object: a small vessel a mourner kept, and the tears in it were evidence that a grief had actually happened and had been taken seriously. David asks God to keep his in one, and the extraordinary thing is that he does not have to explain any of them first. He does not itemize. He hands over the whole lot and asks for them to be kept.

You have tears already kept and you were never asked to justify a single one of them, including the ones nobody ever saw. Scripture puts the tears in a bottle without one word of explanation attached, and the Holy Spirit is the one who receives what has never been said out loud to anybody.

And then, are they not in thy book? It is a question with an obvious answer, and David asks it the way you ask something you already know. The record exists. It was being kept while it was happening, at the time, without anybody reporting it, including the parts you have never told a soul.

You are in a book that was written without your testimony, and you were never depending on your own account of it to make it real. The written word says are they not in thy book and expects the answer yes, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that answer land at a sink where a woman has been alone with something for a very long time.

Now here is the small thing I would ask of you, and it is not the big thing you may be dreading. Not the whole story. Not to anybody who knows you. One sentence, out loud, to God, standing at that sink. He already has it in the book. Saying it is not informing Him. It is you stopping being the only voice that has ever held it.

And the plain thing, which this site says in every article and means completely: a counselor is a good thing and going to one is not a defeat, and if what is standing beside you is heavy, a person trained to sit with it is God's kindness with a face on it. Your doctor, a counselor, a friend, a room where people sit in a circle. There is no version of using that help that makes your faith smaller.