Back At Work And Nobody To Tell

You were on shift at six and somebody asked how it went and you said good.

They meant it kindly. It is what people say, and it is not a real question, and they had already half turned away by the time you answered, and neither of you did anything wrong.

But you had a whole day in you.

There was the thing your nephew said that you have not stopped thinking about. There was the moment with your aunt in the kitchen that was the best five minutes of your year. There was the part that went slightly wrong and was then funny. There was the drive back with the radio off.

And all of it is in there, uncompressed, at six in the morning, in a place where the answer to how was it is one syllable.

Here is what I want to name, because I do not think anybody ever has.

A day that is not told to anybody does not stay the same size. It shrinks. Within about a week most of it will be gone, and what will be left is the general fact that it happened and possibly one image. Telling a thing is part of how a person keeps it, and you have nowhere to tell this.

No man cared for my soul

There is a line in the psalms about looking round a room and finding nobody, and it is bleaker than most people expect Scripture to allow.

I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul. (Psalm 142:4, King James Version)

No man that would know me. Not: nobody was there. There were people. What is missing is somebody who would know him, which is a different thing and a more specific one.

And then the last clause, which is as bleak as the Bible gets: no man cared for my soul.

He does not soften it. He does not add a line about how he is sure somebody does really. He states it as the condition he is in, and it stands in the psalm, and nobody corrects him for exaggerating.

You are describing a real condition rather than being dramatic, and it is written into Psalm 142:4 that a man looked round and found no one who would know him. The written word states it without softening a syllable, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the self pity out of an accurate observation at six in the morning.

And notice where the psalm is addressed. He is saying this to somebody.

You have somebody to say it to even in the sentence about having nobody, and Psalm 142:4 is spoken to God in the middle of the complaint. Scripture puts the whole of it inside a prayer, and the Spirit of God is the one who is being addressed in the very line about not being known.

Why the day needs telling

Now let me be exact about what is actually being lost, because it is not company.

This is not loneliness at work. You like most of them. That is not the issue.

The issue is that a day that has not been told stays raw material. It has not been shaped into anything. The telling is what turns a sequence of events into something a person owns, and until that happens it sits in you as an undigested lump.

That is why you feel slightly odd this morning. Not sad. Full, and with nowhere to put it, which is a strange sensation and one that men your age almost never describe out loud.

You are carrying a day that has not been made into anything yet, and Scripture puts a man's whole account in front of God rather than leaving it in him. Psalm 142 is a man telling it out at length, and the Holy Spirit is the one who receives what has nowhere else to go.

And here is the second thing. If nobody hears it in the next two or three days, most of it goes.

Not the fact of it. The detail. The specific thing your nephew said, in the specific way he said it, will be gone by about Thursday, and it was the best thing that happened to you in some time.

That is not sentimentality. It is how memory works, and telling is the main mechanism people have for keeping anything.

You have a mechanism available that costs nothing and takes twenty minutes, and it has never once required a listener who asked properly. Psalm 142:4 is spoken rather than merely felt, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is being addressed in the very line about nobody knowing a man.

You have something worth keeping that will not survive being untold, and the written word has a man pour out the whole account rather than summarize it. Psalm 142:4 is one line inside a long telling, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present while a man goes through it in detail.

Tell it on the way in

So here is the assignment, and the not summarizing is the whole point.

Tell the whole day out loud to God on the way to work, and do not summarize it.

Out loud, in the vehicle, on the way in. Nobody can hear it, there are twenty minutes, and there is nothing else to do with them.

And tell it properly. Not: it was a good day, thank you. That is the version you gave at work. Tell it the way you would tell it to somebody who actually wanted to know: what your nephew said, and what you said back, and the thing that went wrong, and the five minutes in the kitchen.

You are able to tell the whole thing to somebody who is not half turning away, and it has never once required anybody at work to have asked a real question. Psalm 142:4 sits inside a long account rather than a summary, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in the vehicle for the whole twenty minutes.

And I want to be plain about why out loud rather than remembering it fondly.

Remembering does not do the job. It reruns images and it shapes nothing. Speaking forces a sequence, and a sequence is what turns a day into a thing a man has rather than a thing that happened to him.

It will feel absurd for about ninety seconds and then it will not.

You are shaping a day rather than replaying it, and Scripture has a man say the whole of it out loud to God rather than hold it. Psalm 142:4 is spoken and not merely felt, and the Spirit of God is the one who is being told rather than merely observing.