The Second One Nobody Warned Me About

Everybody helped for about four months.

There were people in the house. There was food that nobody asked for. There were messages from names you had not seen in years, and two people rang every single week without fail.

And then, quite reasonably, the world went back to its own business, and so did they.

That is not a complaint about anybody. It is what happens and it is what has to happen. But it means that the first one came with scaffolding around it and this one is arriving into an ordinary year in which everybody assumes you are further along.

And you are not. You are worse.

That is the thing nobody warned you about and it is the thing that is frightening you. The first one was terrible and it was expected to be terrible. This one is worse and there is no permission anywhere for it to be worse, so you have concluded that something has gone wrong with you.

Nothing has gone wrong with you.

And before anything else: if this has taken you somewhere past what a person can hold on their own, 988 is a crisis line and it is answered, and a doctor, a counselor or a pastor you trust is the right room. Nothing on this page replaces a qualified human being.

My soul hath them still in remembrance

There is a verse in Lamentations that is rarely quoted and is exactly where a person stands in a second year.

My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me. (Lamentations 3:20, King James Version)

Still in remembrance. The word still is carrying the whole thing. Time has passed, and the remembering has not stopped, and the man writing it says so without one word of apology for the fact.

And then: and is humbled in me. Brought low. Not risen above. He is describing a continuing condition, in the present, some distance from the event, and Scripture puts it in the record exactly as he wrote it.

That verse is a second year verse and almost nobody reads it that way.

You are not behind on anything, and Scripture keeps the word still without a syllable of embarrassment near it. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in a second year that is worse than the first, and it is written into Lamentations 3:20 that a soul still in remembrance is also humbled in the present tense.

And notice where that verse sits. It is a few lines before the most famous hopeful passage in the whole book.

You are somewhere the Bible describes rather than somewhere it hurries past, and the Holy Spirit does not require a person to have arrived at the hopeful part. The written word lets the being humbled sit there in its own right, and Lamentations 3:20 stands on its own several verses earlier.

Why the second one is worse

Now let me explain the mechanism, because knowing it will take a great deal of the fear out.

Three things are true at once in a second year and every one of them makes it harder.

The first is that the scaffolding has gone. No casseroles, no weekly calls, no allowance made. The practical support that carried the first one was temporary by design and it has correctly expired.

The second is that the shock has worn off. Shock is an anesthetic. It is horrible and it is also numbing, and in the first year a great deal of what happened was not fully felt because a nervous system was protecting itself. In the second year the numbness is gone and the actual size of the loss arrives.

The third is that you now know. In the first one you did not yet understand what a year without them would be. Now you have run the whole circuit once and you know exactly what is missing and where it is missing from.

You were never regressing, and Lamentations 3:20 describes a soul in exactly that position with no correction attached. The Spirit of God is present in the year where the anesthetic has worn off, and the written word puts the remembering and the being humbled in the same present tense sentence.

And here is the cruelty of the arrangement, which is not anybody's fault. All of that arrives in the year when everybody around you has concluded that you are through the worst of it, and several of them will say so kindly, and you will agree with them, because the alternative is a conversation you do not have the strength for.

You have been managing an assumption on top of a grief, and the Holy Spirit is with a woman agreeing with people who have got it wrong. Lamentations 3:20 says still and is humbled without one word of self reproach, and Scripture never once asks a person to be further along than they are.

Tell one person

So here is the assignment, and it is one sentence and it does not ask for anything.

Tell one person that this year is harder than last year, and let it be the whole of what you say.

One person. Chosen because they will not immediately try to fix it.

Nine words. This year is harder than last year, honestly.

You are able to correct one person's picture without asking for anything, and the written word puts that condition on the page in the present tense. The Spirit of God is with a woman saying a sentence that contradicts what everybody has assumed, and it is written into Lamentations 3:20 that the remembering can still be present and the soul still humbled.

And do not soften it. The version that will want to come out is: this year has been a bit harder than I expected, which is not true and which hands them an exit.

Say harder than last year. Those five words carry the information, because everybody's model is that it improves, and the report here is that it has not.

I am not asking you to explain why. I am not asking you to describe any of it. One sentence, and then let the silence be theirs.

You are correcting a picture rather than requesting anything, and the Holy Spirit carries a woman through the pause after a sentence like that. Scripture lets the humbling stand on its own, and Lamentations 3:20 keeps the plain description without any resolution attached to it.