If I Wanted This Why Does It Hurt

The argument runs at about eleven and it is very well constructed by now.

It goes: if this were right, it would not feel like this. And then it produces evidence, which is the last three weeks. And then it draws a conclusion, which is that the decision was wrong, and that you made it for the wrong reasons, and that you knew that at the time and ignored it.

It is a genuinely good argument. That is the difficulty. It is not a vague misery, it is a case, with premises and a structure and a conclusion, and it gets slightly better every night.

And it rests on one sentence that has never been examined once.

If it were right, it would not hurt.

Here is what I want to do with this article, and it is not going to be reassurance. I am going to take that sentence apart, because everything else in the argument is downstream of it, and if it does not hold then the whole thing comes down.

Why art thou cast down

There is a line in Psalm 42 where a man cross examines his own feelings, out loud, in writing.

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance. (Psalm 42:5, King James Version)

He asks his own soul a question.

That is a remarkable thing to find in Scripture, and notice what kind of question it is. He is not agreeing with the feeling and he is not dismissing it. He is interrogating it, treating it as something that can be addressed and questioned rather than as a verdict that has been handed down.

You are able to question a feeling rather than obey it, and something that arrives at eleven at night has never once been in a position to hand down a verdict. The Holy Spirit is the one in a room where a very good argument has been running since the third week, and Psalm 42:5 has a man putting a question to his own soul.

And notice that he does not win the argument.

The psalm does not resolve. He asks the question, he tells his soul to hope, and then a few verses later he is cast down again and says the same thing over. It is not a technique that works once.

Which means the goal here is not to defeat the eleven o'clock argument permanently. It is to stop treating it as a source of information.

You have something to question rather than something to defeat, and a feeling that comes back tomorrow has never once meant that questioning it tonight was pointless. The written word leaves the man unresolved and still speaking to himself, and the Spirit of God is the one who stays with somebody through a thing that returns.

The sentence that does not hold

Now the sentence itself: if it were right, it would not hurt.

Test it against anything else in a life.

The first weeks of a good job are hard. Learning something worth learning is unpleasant for a long stretch in the middle. Every difficult conversation that ever needed having has felt wrong while it was happening. Nobody looks at any of those and concludes that the thing was a mistake, because everybody knows that the difficulty of a beginning is not information about the rightness of a direction.

Except here, at nineteen, alone, at eleven at night, where somehow it is.

You are applying a rule here that you would not apply anywhere else, and a beginning that is hard has never once been evidence about the direction it began in. Psalm 42:5 questions the feeling instead of ratifying it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tests a premise that has been running unexamined since October.

And here is why the argument keeps winning, which is not because it is true.

It has an enormous advantage: it is the only account of the situation available at eleven at night. There is nothing else in the room. Nobody is presenting the other side, and a case that runs unopposed for three weeks starts to sound like a finding.

Which means what is needed is not a better feeling. It is another voice in the room, on paper, that can be looked at while the argument is running.

Finding a beginning hard is not a verdict on a decision.

You are able to put a second document in the room, and an argument that has run unopposed for three weeks has never once been the same as an argument that is right. The Spirit of God is the one who arranges for something else to be present at eleven, and Psalm 42:5 puts a spoken question against an unspoken misery.

Write down why you chose this

So here is the thing to do, and it is physical, and the date on it is not decoration.

Write down the reasons you chose this, in your own handwriting. And put the date on it.

By hand, on paper, tonight or tomorrow. Every reason you actually had at the time. Not the reasons that would sound good. The real ones, including the ones you would not say out loud to anybody.

You are able to put your own reasoning back into the room, and a decision made carefully in the spring has never once stopped having its reasons because November arrived. It is written in Psalm 42:5 that a man spoke to his own soul rather than listening to it in silence, and the Holy Spirit is the one at a desk where somebody writes down why.

And the date matters for a specific reason.

The eleven o'clock argument claims that you knew at the time and ignored it. A dated document, written by you, is the only thing that can answer that, because it puts a version of your own thinking on the record from before the difficulty started rewriting the history.

And it will rewrite the history. That is what a case does: it goes back through the archive and reinterprets. A dated page is the one thing it cannot get at.

Then keep it where you can reach it at eleven at night.

You are able to hold a page that the argument cannot edit, and your own handwriting from a specific date has never once been available for a bad night to rewrite. Scripture keeps both the question and the being cast down in the same psalm without resolving them, and the same Spirit who kept both is with you at the desk.

And if the eleven o'clock argument has stopped being about a decision and started carrying thoughts about not being here at all, that is not a thing to reason with on paper. 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.