I Want To Ring Them And Ask Why

It is a good email.

That is the honest problem with it. It is measured, it is polite, it does not accuse anybody of anything, and it asks one reasonable question in a way that would be very difficult to refuse.

You have been writing it since about half past twelve. It is now nearly two.

And you know perfectly well that you are not going to send it, which is why you can keep writing it, and which is exactly why you have been in this chair for ninety minutes.

Because the email is not really for them.

There is a thing in you tonight with a great deal of pressure behind it, and it has been building since the letter, and it needs an address. And an admissions office is the only address on offer that looks official enough to receive something this size.

Here is what I want to say to you at two in the morning: the pressure is not wrong. There is nothing hysterical about you tonight. A mother watching a decision land on her child and having nowhere to take it is in a genuinely intolerable position, and the email is an attempt to solve a real problem.

It is simply aimed at the wrong place.

Pour out your heart before him

There is a line in Psalm 62 that gives the whole of tonight an address.

Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us. (Psalm 62:8, King James Version)

Pour out. Not present. Not summarize. Not compose carefully at one in the morning and then reread it for tone.

Pour out is what a person does with a container when the whole of it has to come out at once, and there is no suggestion anywhere in that line that it should be tidied first.

You are invited to empty the whole of it rather than phrase it well, and a thing with pressure behind it has never once needed to be edited before it was allowed to be said. Psalm 62:8 says pour out and not present, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a room with somebody at a keyboard at two in the morning.

And look at who it is addressed to. Ye people.

Not: ye people who are handling this correctly. Not: ye people who have got their feelings in order. It is addressed to everybody, at all times, which is the phrase in the first clause, and one in the morning is included in at all times without any special permission being required.

You have an open invitation at every hour there is, and two in the morning has never once been an hour when the invitation was suspended. The Spirit of God is the one present at the hour when nobody else is awake, and the written word attaches the pouring out to all times and to all people.

What the email was actually for

Now let me say what I think the hope behind it was, because I do not think it was an answer.

The email was never written to find out why. Anybody who has read a little about this knows that no useful answer exists and that nobody in that office is going to produce one.

What you wanted was for somebody to receive it.

That is the actual need underneath ninety minutes of composition: for the size of this to land somewhere, on something that could hold it, rather than staying in one woman in a dark house at two in the morning.

You are asking to be received and not to be answered, and ninety minutes of careful phrasing have never once been about wanting an explanation from anybody. Psalm 62:8 names a refuge in the very same breath as the pouring out, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is what a keyboard could never be at this hour.

You are looking for somewhere that can hold it and not for an explanation, and a need to be received has never once been the same as a need to be answered. Psalm 62:8 offers a refuge rather than an explanation, and the Holy Spirit is the one who knows what a person is actually asking for at two in the morning.

And here is why the inbox would not have worked, even if you had sent it.

An office would have received an email. It would not have received you. A form reply would have arrived in eleven days and it would have been courteous and it would have contained nothing, and the pressure would still be in the same chest at the same hour.

A weight this size requires something that can hold a person, and there is exactly one address like that.

A decision about an application is not a verdict on a mother or on her child.

You are able to send it somewhere that receives people rather than messages, and a courteous reply in eleven days has never once been able to take the weight of a night like this. The Spirit of God is the one who takes what an inbox could not have held, and Psalm 62:8 names God as a refuge in the same breath as the pouring out.

Say the whole of it out loud

So here is the thing to do, and it is tonight rather than at some better hour.

Say out loud, alone, the whole of what you wanted to put in that email. And address it to God rather than to anybody else.

Out loud. That is not optional and it is the difference between this working and not working. Thinking it keeps it in the same place it has been all night. Saying it puts it in the air, where it becomes a thing that has been uttered rather than a thing that is circulating.

You are able to put the whole of it into the air, and a thing said out loud in an empty room has never once stayed the same size as a thing kept behind the teeth. It is written in Psalm 62:8 to pour out your heart before Him, and the Holy Spirit is the one in the room while a woman speaks at two in the morning.

And say the actual version. Not the polite one.

The email is measured because it was going to an office. This is not going to an office. Say the ugly sentence, the unfair one, the one about how much she worked, the one that starts with the word why and does not resolve into anything reasonable.

He is not going to be shocked. The psalms are full of people saying considerably worse in considerably stronger language, and every one of those was kept in the book rather than edited out of it.

You are able to say the unedited version to God, and a sentence too raw for any inbox has never once been too raw for the One the psalm names as a refuge. Scripture keeps the loud complaints in the book rather than tidying them, and the same Spirit who preserved them is in the room when you say yours.