You have got a routine for it now.
You check the light. You move so that the wall behind you is the tidy one. You have two or three things ready to say, one of which is usually funny, and you save something small from the week specifically for this, because a call with nothing in it produces questions.
Twice a week, about twenty five minutes each, since about the second week.
And afterward you sit there and feel more alone than before you rang.
That is the part that makes no sense to you and it is the reason for this piece. It should work the other way. A call home should be the thing that helps, and instead there is a reliable dip about ten minutes after it ends, every single time, and you have started slightly dreading a thing you also want.
Here is what I want to name at the start.
You are not lying to them and I am not going to call it that. You are protecting two people you love from worrying about something they cannot do anything about from four hundred miles away, which is one of the more decent instincts a person can have.
It is simply not working, and it is worth understanding exactly why.
Thou desirest truth in the inward parts
There is a line in Psalm 51 about where God is actually looking, and it is unexpectedly specific.
Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. (Psalm 51:6, King James Version)
Truth in the inward parts.
Not truth in the account. Not truth in the report. The inward parts, which is to say the place that a person does not show anybody, and that is where the verse says the desire is aimed.
Which means the version of you on that call is not the version being looked at, and the version being looked at is not being assessed for its performance.
You are being met in the part nobody sees, and a version produced for a screen has never once been the version God was looking at. The Holy Spirit is the one in a room about ten minutes after a call ends, and Psalm 51:6 puts the desire in the inward parts specifically.
And notice the second half: in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.
The hidden part is not merely where the looking happens. It is where the teaching happens. That is where things get worked out, according to that verse, which means that the part of you that has been sitting alone after every call is not the part that is malfunctioning.
It is the part that is being worked on.
You have a hidden part that is not a fault, and a stretch of an hour that nobody sees has never once been the part of a person that was going wrong. The written word makes the hidden part the site of the teaching, and the Spirit of God is the one who works in exactly the place a person cannot show anybody.
Why the call makes it worse
Now the mechanism, because once it is visible the dip stops being mysterious.
A call home is meant to reduce distance. What it actually does depends entirely on how much of you is in it.
When a person shows up on a call as themselves, the distance closes for twenty five minutes. When a person shows up as a produced version, something else happens: you spend twenty five minutes with the people you miss most, being somebody slightly other than yourself, and then the call ends and the loneliness is now specific rather than general.
Because you have just been with them and were not there.
You are lonelier for having been present as somebody else, and twenty five minutes of a produced version has never once been the same as twenty five minutes of being with anybody. Psalm 51:6 locates the truth in the inward parts rather than in the account, and the Holy Spirit is the one who explains a dip that arrives ten minutes after every call.
And here is the second half, which is about them and which you have not considered.
They already know.
Not the details. But your mother has listened to that voice since before it could speak, and there is nothing about a produced good week that survives contact with that. What she has is a son who sounds slightly wrong and who is telling her that everything is fine, and she cannot ask about it directly because the question has already been answered in advance.
So she worries anyway, without information, which is the worst available version of worrying.
Struggling with a hard term is not a verdict on anybody.
You are able to give her something real to hold instead of nothing, and a parent worrying without information has never once been better off than a parent who was told. The Spirit of God is the one who ends a protection that was never protecting anybody, and Psalm 51:6 puts the desire for truth inside a person rather than in what they present.
One true thing you would have left out
So here is the thing to do, and it is deliberately small.
On the next call, say one true thing about your week that you would normally have left out.
Not a confession. Not the whole of it. One thing, factual, from the ordinary difficult middle of a week: I have not really got anybody to eat with. That thing on Tuesday went badly. I have been sleeping in.
You are able to put one true thing into a call, and a small honest detail has never once been the same as breaking down in front of anybody. It is written in Psalm 51:6 that God desires truth in the inward parts, and the Holy Spirit is the one on a video call when somebody says a thing they had planned to leave out.
And say it in the middle of the call rather than at the start or the end.
At the start it becomes the subject. At the end it hangs there with no time to settle. In the middle, between two ordinary things, it lands as a fact about a week rather than as an announcement, and the conversation can carry on around it.
Then let them react however they react, and do not manage it.
You are able to say a true thing and let somebody else have their response to it, and one honest detail has never once obliged anybody to do anything about it. Scripture puts the truth in the inward parts and the wisdom in the hidden part, and the same Spirit who works there is on the call while the sentence goes out.
And if what is in you is bigger than a hard term, if there are thoughts about not being here at all, that does not belong in a video call. Tell somebody where you are, today, out loud and in person if you can, and if it is urgent go to an emergency room or ring an emergency number where you are. That is not a dramatic act. It is the same instruction, said louder.
So here is what I believe is going out over somebody sitting in a room ten minutes after a call.
You are allowed to be seen by your own parents, and a good week produced twice a week has never once been the thing that protects anybody. I am not going to tell you to break down on the next call and I am not going to tell you they can fix it. Psalm 51:6 says thou desirest truth in the inward parts, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my saying so who is in that room with you afterward.
And this, which is the word I came with:
You have been with the people you miss most and not been there, and a call spent as somebody else has never once closed one mile of anything. The Spirit of God is the one on the call when the one true thing goes in, and the written word puts both the truth and the teaching in the part nobody sees.
One true thing. In the middle. Then carry on.
Declare this over yourself
- Version of me that gets produced twice a week for a screen, you are well lit and you are convincing, and you were never once the one being looked at. Psalm 51:6 says thou desirest truth in the inward parts, so by the Holy Spirit I say one true thing in the middle of the next call, in the name of Jesus.
- Fear that telling them anything real makes it worse for two people who can do nothing, you have never once described a mother listening to a voice she has known since before I could speak. The written word puts the truth inside rather than in the account, and by the Spirit of God I stop protecting them from information they already half have.
- Father, You said You desire truth in the inward parts and that the hidden part is where You teach. Your word puts both of those in the place nobody sees, so by Your Spirit I stop performing on a screen, and I say one true thing.
Psalm 51:6
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