I Can Tell From The First Word

He says hello and you already know.

Not from the words. From something underneath them, a fraction of a tone, the particular length of the pause before it. And your whole body has already done its arithmetic and arrived at an answer before the second sentence has started.

You are usually right. That is the part that makes this so hard to give up. Twenty five years of practice have made you genuinely accurate, and accuracy feels like competence, and competence feels like something you would be foolish to put down.

But here is what it actually is. It is a smoke alarm that has been left on in a house for twenty five years, and it has never once been switched off, and the wiring is tired.

And if what you are scanning for is not moods but harm, if somebody in that family hurts or frightens you, then the vigilance is not a habit and this article is not the first thing you need. Getting help from somebody qualified where you live comes before every word of it.

What the scanning is buying

Let me be fair to it, because the scanning has never been paranoia.

Vigilance is a prediction system, and prediction systems get built by people who have been surprised badly. Somewhere back there, something arrived without warning and it cost you, and a very intelligent part of you decided that would not happen again.

And it has largely worked. You are rarely surprised now.

You have been running a system built by a boy who was blindsided, and never being surprised again has never once been the same as being safe. Psalm 46:10 says be still and know that I am God, which is the written word putting the stillness before the knowing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can switch an alarm off without leaving a house unguarded.

And the person on the other end of that hello is a whole man. He has his own weather and his own reasons for it, mostly handed to him by somebody who did the same. He is right about at least one thing you have never conceded.

He also has no idea that a hello from him gets analyzed. From his side there is a phone call.

You are able to hear him without measuring him, and listening to somebody plainly has never once meant walking into something unprepared. The Spirit of God is what makes an unguarded hello possible, and it is written in Psalm 46 that the instruction is to be still and then to know.

Be still, and know

Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. (Psalm 46:10, King James Version)

That verse is on a great many walls and it is almost always read as a soothing line. Read in context it is nothing of the sort.

Psalm 46 is a psalm about catastrophe. The earth being removed. Mountains carried into the sea. Waters roaring. Nations raging. It is the loudest psalm in the book, and in the middle of all that noise comes an instruction to stop moving.

The Hebrew behind be still is closer to let go, or cease, or drop your hands. It is not an invitation to relax. It is an order to stand down.

You have been given an instruction to stand down, and being told to stop scanning has never once meant that the noise around you was imaginary. It is written in Psalm 46:10 that the command is be still and know that I am God, which is the written word ordering the hands open in the middle of a genuine emergency, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes stillness possible while things are still loud.

And notice the order of it. Be still, and then know. The stillness comes first and the knowing follows.

That is the reverse of how you have been operating. You have been trying to know first, from the first word, so that you could eventually be still. It has never once worked in twenty five years, because the knowing you were reaching for is not available in a tone of voice.

You are able to be still before anything is settled, and knowing what is coming has never once been the thing that made a person safe. The Spirit of God is the one who provides the safety that vigilance has been trying to manufacture, and Psalm 46 puts the stillness before the knowledge and not after it.

What it costs to always be right

Here is the price, and it is not obvious until somebody names it.

There has not been an ordinary conversation with that person in twenty five years.

Every one of them has been conducted through an instrument. You hear hello and the reading starts, and while the reading runs there is a portion of you standing slightly back from the conversation, watching the dials.

So you know him extremely well and you have not once simply been with him.

You have been analyzing a man you actually love, and being accurate about somebody has never once been the same as being close to them. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person set the instrument down mid conversation, and it is written that the order is to be still first and know afterward.

And there is a cost to your own body that you have stopped noticing, the way anybody stops noticing a sound that never changes. You are braced from the first ring. Your shoulders do a thing. Afterward there is a flatness for about an hour that you have long since filed under normal.

Twenty five years of that is not free, and you have been paying it in a currency nobody itemizes.

You are permitted to answer a phone unbraced, and one unguarded hello has never once been the same as leaving a door open. The Spirit of God is what carries a man through a call he is not managing, and Psalm 46:10 puts the standing down in the middle of the roaring rather than after it stops.