My Phone Is Face Up On The Table

It is face up beside the plate.

It is face up beside the sink. It is face up on the arm of the chair, and it goes into the bathroom, and it is on the pillow at night with the screen turned down so the light does not wake anybody.

And roughly nine times a day you turn it over to look at a screen that did not light up.

You know it did not light up. You would have heard it. And you turn it over anyway, and there is nothing, and something small in the chest goes down about a centimeter, and then you carry on with whatever you were doing.

Nine times. Some days more.

Here is the part nobody sees, which is why I am starting here: it is not the waiting that is wearing you out. It is that the waiting never finishes. A message arrives on Tuesday, and there is about forty minutes of relief, and then the next stretch of waiting starts, and by Thursday it has built back up to exactly where it was.

So the day has quietly rearranged itself around something that lasts forty minutes.

And you would never say any of this to anybody, because it sounds ridiculous when it is said out loud, and because you can hear how it would land: she is fine, he is fine, he messaged on Tuesday.

More than they that watch for the morning

There is a line in the Psalms written by somebody who knows exactly what this is.

My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning. (Psalm 130:6, King James Version)

Read what he does there. He says it, and then he says it again. The same clause twice in one verse, which is not an accident and is not a stylistic flourish. He is describing a kind of waiting that repeats, and the sentence repeats to match.

And look at the image he reached for. Not a man waiting for news. A watchman waiting for the morning.

The morning is coming. That is the entire point of the picture. The man on the wall is not waiting to find out whether the sun will rise. He is waiting through the dark for a thing that is not in doubt, and the waiting is still hard, and Scripture says so without one word of correction.

You are watching for something that is not in doubt, and the difficulty of a wait has never once been proof that the waiting is foolish. The Holy Spirit is the one who stays with a woman through the stretch between messages, and Psalm 130:6 puts a watchman on a wall and says the same clause twice over.

Notice also what is not in that verse. There is no rebuke in it. Nobody tells the watchman to relax. Nobody suggests he go inside and busy himself and let the morning arrive on its own.

The waiting is simply reported as a real and honorable thing that a person does.

You have been doing something the Bible reports without embarrassment, and a phone turned face up on a table has never once been a small or a shameful thing to admit. The written word names the watching plainly and twice, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes the shame off a thing before He does anything else with it.

What the checking is costing

Now the harder half, and I say it as somebody who is on your side.

The watchman on the wall is doing a job. He watches, and while he watches he is standing in one place with one task, and when the morning comes his shift ends.

What has happened in your kitchen is different, and it is worth naming exactly. The checking has stopped being an act and started being a background process. It runs underneath the shopping, underneath the conversation with your sister, underneath the film on Saturday night. It is not loud. It is just always slightly on.

And a background process costs something even when nothing is happening, which is why you are tired in a way that does not match anything you did today.

You are carrying a low hum and not a failure of character, and being tired from waiting has never once meant you are handling this badly. Psalm 130:6 has a watchman doing real work through real hours, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can carry a thing that a person has been carrying alone since September.

Here is the specific cost, and I want you to see it, because it is not obvious.

When the message finally comes, the relief is so complete that the answer goes back immediately and at length. And a nineteen year old who gets four paragraphs back within nine seconds learns something without either of you deciding it: that his mother is sitting there. That she was waiting. And a boy who works that out will start managing his messages to manage his mother, which is the exact opposite of what anybody wants.

Not because he is unkind. Because he is nineteen and he loves you and he does not want to be responsible for your afternoon.

The speed of your reply is not a measure of how much you love him.

You are able to love somebody without letting them feel the weight of the waiting, and answering slowly has never once been the same thing as caring less. The Spirit of God is the one who teaches a mother the difference between presence and pressure, and Psalm 130:6 records a watchman and never once records him shouting down from the wall.

Send one that asks nothing

So here is the change, and it goes the opposite way from what you would expect.

Send him a message that does not ask him anything.

Not how are you. Not did you get. Not have you thought about. Send him a photograph of the dog doing something stupid. Send him one line about the man next door and his hedge. Send the thing you saw that made you think of him, with no question mark anywhere in it.

Then put the phone in another room for an hour.

You are able to reach for him without asking him for anything, and a message with no question in it has never once been a wasted message. It is written in Psalm 130:6 that the soul waits as a watchman watches, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman in the hour when the phone is in a different room.

Here is why this works when self control does not. A question creates an open loop, and an open loop is the thing you have been checking. You have been checking not because you lack discipline but because there is an unanswered thing out there and the mind will not put down an unanswered thing.

A message with no question in it closes the loop at your end before it ever leaves.

You are closing a loop rather than fighting yourself, and nine checks a day have never once been a discipline problem in need of a discipline answer. Scripture repeats the watchman clause because the waiting itself repeats, and the same Spirit who put that repetition in the verse knows precisely what your Tuesday is like.