I Cry In The Car Before I Go In

Four hours on the road, and then eleven minutes in a parked car forty feet from the house.

Nobody knows about the eleven minutes. From inside, you arrived. There is a car door and a bag and somebody comes out and there is a lot of noise on the step and it is genuinely good to see them.

But there is a stretch before that where you sit with the engine off and your hands still on the wheel and something comes up out of your chest that you did not schedule.

And then you fix your face, and you get the bag, and you go in.

You have been doing this for about six years. You have never once told anybody, because there is nothing to tell. Nothing happened. You cried in a car.

What the eleven minutes are

Let me say what I think is actually happening in that car, because it has probably been filed as weakness.

What is happening is an arrival, and not the physical kind. A person coming to a family gathering has to become somebody: the daughter, the brother, the one who is doing well, whatever the role is in that house. And the person who drove four hours is not that person yet.

The car is the changing room. Eleven minutes is how long it takes.

You have been doing something necessary in that parked car, and no honest ten minutes has ever once been the same as falling apart. Psalm 56:8 says thou tellest my wanderings, put thou my tears into thy bottle, which is the written word treating tears as things worth keeping, and the Holy Spirit is the one sitting in a car forty feet from a house.

And the people inside are real. They are not the cause of the eleven minutes, or not only. Some of it is the four hours. Some of it is being thirty eight and driving to the house you grew up in, which does something to anybody.

Somebody in there is right about something you have never conceded. And every one of them would be genuinely upset to learn you sit outside, which is worth knowing.

You are able to hold that family kindly and still need the car, and needing a moment before a door has never once been an accusation against anybody behind it. The Spirit of God is what lets two true things stand together, and it is written in Psalm 56 that God tells our wanderings and keeps our tears.

Put thou my tears into thy bottle

Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book? (Psalm 56:8, King James Version)

There are three separate things in that verse and every one of them is about a record being kept.

Thou tellest my wanderings. Tellest there means counts. God is counting the journeys, which in David's case were mostly running, mostly at night, mostly with nobody watching.

Then: put my tears into thy bottle. That is a real object from the ancient world, a small vessel that held something worth keeping. He is asking for his crying to be collected rather than wasted.

You are producing something in that car that God treats as worth keeping, and eleven minutes with the engine off has never once been unwitnessed. It is written in Psalm 56:8 that He puts our tears into His bottle and asks are they not in thy book, which is the written word making a record of exactly this, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been in every one of those six years of parking.

And then the question at the end, which is the tenderest part. Are they not in thy book. He is not asking God to start noticing. He is stating something he already knows and turning it into a question because it is almost too good to say flat.

Nothing you have done in that car has gone unrecorded. Not one of the six years.

You have been seen every single time, and no private thing has ever once been outside the book God keeps. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in a car nobody knows about, and Psalm 56 counts the wanderings and collects the tears in the same breath.

Going in

Now the practical part, and it is not what you might expect. I am not going to tell you to stop sitting in the car.

The eleven minutes are doing a job and they are doing it honestly. Take them. If it is fifteen, take fifteen.

What I would change is one thing: give the afternoon an end before you get out.

You are able to walk in knowing when you walk out, and a decided ending has never once made an arrival less genuine. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a bounded day possible, and it is written that He puts our tears into His bottle and tells our wanderings.

Because here is what makes that four hour drive so heavy on the way home. It is not the gathering. It is that you drove four hours, so the visit has to be worth four hours, so it becomes open ended, and an open ended visit in a house that costs you eleven minutes at the gate is a very long visit.

Give it an end. Say it out loud in the car while you are already sitting there. Then tell one person once you are inside.

You are allowed to leave on Sunday at two, and setting a time before you arrive has never once been an insult to a family you drove four hours to see. The Spirit of God is what makes an ordinary departure ordinary, and Psalm 56:8 has already counted the journey both ways.