I Am Putting It All Away By Myself

The last of the work is the part nobody comes for.

Everybody was here yesterday. Several of them helped, genuinely, and two of them stayed longer than they had to and did more than anybody asked.

And this morning there is a house full of the remains of it, and there is you, and there is nobody else.

That is not a complaint about any of them. Nobody has done anything wrong. It is simply that the work divides very unevenly across the two days, and the day everybody is present for is the one with the company in it, and the day with the clearing in it is the one where the house is empty.

So you have been going room to room since about eight, doing the last two hours of a thing you did the whole of, on your own, in a quiet house.

And somewhere around the second room something arrived that you have been trying not to look at.

Let me name it for you, because I think you have been reaching for a word and rejecting every one that comes, on the grounds that it is too dramatic for a Tuesday morning.

The word is lonely. And the reason you keep rejecting it is that you have people, and they were here yesterday, and a woman with people who calls herself lonely feels like a woman being ungrateful.

She is not. Those two facts are entirely compatible and almost nobody says so.

I am desolate and afflicted

There is a line in the psalms that uses a word most people would not permit themselves.

Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me; for I am desolate and afflicted. (Psalm 25:16, King James Version)

Desolate. It is a strong word and it means alone in an emptied place, and it is being used by a man who was king, who had a household, and who was surrounded by people who would have come if he had called.

He uses it anyway. He does not reach for something proportionate. He does not qualify it by acknowledging everything he has. He says the word that is true about his own condition and lets it stand in a psalm.

And notice it is offered as a reason. For I am desolate and afflicted. He is not confessing it; he is submitting it as grounds.

You are permitted to use the accurate word rather than the proportionate one, and it is written into Psalm 25:16 that a man with a household called himself desolate. The written word lets the strong word stand uncorrected, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the self indulgence out of a plain description on a Tuesday.

And the request beside it is physical: turn thee unto me.

You are able to ask for a face to be turned rather than for a situation to be fixed, and Psalm 25:16 asks for attention before it asks for anything else. Scripture puts the turning first, and the Spirit of God is the one who is in an emptied house before anybody thinks to be.

Why this morning is the hard one

Let me be exact about why this particular morning does what it does, because it will help to know it is structural.

Yesterday had people and work. Today has work and no people. And the work is the same work.

That is the whole of it, and it is the reason this morning is harder than yesterday despite yesterday being longer and heavier. Company does not remove work; it makes work into something else. The same two hours with one other person in the house are a completely different two hours.

You are doing identical work in a different substance, and the written word never once tells a person that company is a small thing. Psalm 25:16 asks first for a face to be turned toward somebody, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in an emptied room at half past nine.

And here is the second thing. There is a particular cruelty in the order of it. If the clearing came first and the company afterward, a person would carry the work toward something. It comes the other way round: the good part is finished and the residue is yours.

That is nobody's fault and it is not fixable, and it is worth naming rather than absorbing, because an unnamed structural thing gets absorbed as a personal one.

You were never being ungrateful about yesterday, and Scripture has a man with a full household use the word desolate with nothing attached to excuse it. Psalm 25:16 does not balance the statement against his blessings, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates a structure from a character.

Say the plain word while you work

So here is the assignment, and the timing is the whole of it.

Say out loud the plain word for what this morning is, and say it to God with your hands still full.

Not afterward. Not once it is tidy and everything is put away. In the middle of the second room, with things in your hands.

One word or one short sentence. This is lonely. I do not like doing this part on my own.

You are able to say the accurate word rather than the acceptable one, and it has never once required you to balance it against how good yesterday was. Psalm 25:16 offers desolate as a reason rather than as a confession, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in the second room while a woman carries things.

And I want to say why in the middle rather than after.

A thing said afterward is a report about a past state. A thing said in the middle is company. It is not a description of loneliness sent to God at a distance; it is said to somebody in the room while it is happening, which is a different transaction entirely.

That is also why it does not need to be elegant. It is not a prayer in the sense of a composed thing. It is one person in a house saying out loud what is true, to the one who is in there with her.

You are speaking to somebody present rather than reporting to somebody absent, and the written word asks for a face to be turned rather than for a mood to be lifted. Psalm 25:16 puts the turning and the mercy in one sentence, and the Spirit of God is the one who was in the house before the first car arrived yesterday.