I Do Not Have A Home To Be Sick For

The conversation goes round the room about once a week.

Somebody starts it. Usually it is affectionate complaining: about a mother who rings too often, about a father who cannot work a phone, about a house that is chaotic and loud and that everybody says they cannot wait to escape and clearly cannot wait to get back to.

And it goes round, and everybody has a version, and then it gets to you.

And you say something. You have three or four things you say, and they are constructed to sound like a version without being one, and they work perfectly well, and the conversation moves on within about four seconds.

Nobody in that room has any idea.

And afterward there is a particular kind of aloneness that has nothing to do with the room being unfriendly, because that room is genuinely warm and those people are genuinely kind.

Here is what I want to say before anything else. What happens in you during that conversation is not envy and it is not self pity, and calling it either of those is why you have never let yourself look at it directly.

It is that everybody in the room is describing a place they can go, and you are constructing a sentence.

Then the LORD will take me up

There is a line in Psalm 27 that is not a comfort about families and is something much better.

When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up. (Psalm 27:10, King James Version)

Look at the first clause and how plainly it is stated.

When my father and my mother forsake me. Not if. There is no hedging in it, no softening, and no attempt to explain that they probably did their best. It is stated as a fact about a real situation, in Scripture, without one word of embarrassment.

That sentence exists in the book. Somebody put it there on purpose, for people who would need it.

You are holding a thing Scripture states without softening, and a plain fact about a family has never once had to be dressed up before it could be said. Psalm 27:10 puts the forsaking in the text without qualification, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a kitchen after the conversation has gone round.

And now the second clause, which is where everything is.

Then the LORD will take me up.

Take me up is a phrase about gathering. It is what somebody does with a thing that has been left: they go over, and they pick it up, and they take it with them.

It is not a promise about feeling better. It is a description of an action performed on somebody who was left.

You are taken up rather than left, and being without a place to go back to has never once meant being without somebody who came and got you. The Spirit of God is the one who performs the taking up, and the written word answers a forsaking with a gathering rather than with a consolation.

What the four seconds are costing

Now the practical part, and it is about the sentence you construct once a week.

It works. That is the problem with it.

It is well made, it deflects cleanly, and nobody has ever noticed. And every time it works, the gap between you and everybody in that room gets slightly wider, because they now have one more piece of information about you that is not true.

Six months of that is a room full of people who like a version of you that got assembled once a week.

You are able to let one person meet the actual one, and six months of a well made sentence have never once brought anybody one inch nearer. Psalm 27:10 answers a forsaking with a gathering rather than with a better account of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who ends a weekly construction in a warm kitchen.

You are being liked in a room where nobody has been told anything true, and a sentence that deflects cleanly has never once brought anybody one inch closer. Psalm 27:10 states the hard fact rather than managing it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who counts what a well made sentence has cost over six months.

And here is the specific fear underneath, because it is not embarrassment. It is that saying it will change how they look at you.

Not badly. That is the thing. The fear is not of being judged, it is of being handled: that the room will go careful, that somebody will be kind in a particular voice, and that you will become the person with the situation rather than the person who was in the conversation.

That fear is reasonable and it is also the reason for the instruction below, which is designed specifically to prevent exactly that.

Having no house to go back to is not a verdict on a person.

You are able to say it in a way that does not hand anybody a role, and one plain sentence has never once had to turn somebody into a situation. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps a person from becoming a subject, and Psalm 27:10 states the forsaking and moves immediately to the gathering without lingering anywhere.

One sentence, and no explaining

So here is the thing to do, and the second half is what makes it survivable.

Tell one person here, in one sentence, that going home is not a thing you do. And do not explain any further than that.

One sentence. Going home is not really a thing for me.

You are able to say the true thing in eight words, and one plain sentence has never once obliged anybody to say the whole of it. It is written in Psalm 27:10 that when father and mother forsake, the Lord takes up, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a kitchen where eight true words get said.

And then do not explain. This is the entire craft of it. The instinct after a sentence like that is to fill the silence with context, because the silence feels like it is demanding one. Do not. The explanation is what turns a fact into a story, and a story is what makes somebody into the person with the situation.

Eight words, then let it sit, then let the conversation carry on wherever it goes.

What usually happens is that the other person says something small and adequate, like: right, okay. And then they carry on, and they now know, and nothing changes about how anybody in that kitchen behaves.

That is the outcome you actually want, and it is available, and it is only available if the explanation stays out.

You are able to be known without becoming a subject, and eight words with nothing after them have never once turned anybody into a case. Scripture puts the forsaking and the taking up in one verse and adds no commentary at all, and the same Spirit who kept it that short is in the kitchen while you say yours.

And if what sits underneath this has begun to carry thoughts about not being here at all, that is not a thing to hold on your own in a room where nobody knows. Tell somebody today, out loud, in person if you can, and if it is urgent go to an emergency room or ring an emergency number where you are.