I Was Relieved When It Did Not Ring

It was a Thursday and nothing happened.

The phone did not ring. Not once, all evening. And at about half past nine you noticed that you had been sitting in a chair for two hours with a book, and that something in your shoulders had come down, and that you were, in a quiet uncomplicated way, glad.

And about four seconds after that, the other thing arrived.

Because what you had just been glad about was a quiet evening, and a quiet evening means nothing happened to your mother, and being glad about that is fine. But somewhere underneath it was a different sentence, and the different sentence was: I hope it stays like this.

You have not been able to look at that sentence since. It has been about three weeks.

What the relief actually is

Let me take that sentence apart, because unexamined it is going to do a great deal of damage.

Relief is what a body does when a load comes off. It is involuntary. It is not a wish, it is not a preference and it is not a plan. A body that has been braced for three years does not consult you before it relaxes.

And the sentence I hope it stays like this is not a wish about your mother. It is a wish about the bracing.

You were relieved about a weight rather than about a woman, and no body on earth has ever once been able to lie about how tired it is. Psalm 103:14 says he knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are dust, which is the written word describing exactly what God takes into account, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can tell the difference between a wish and a nervous system.

And your mother is a whole person through all of this, and she would not want this either. Nobody who loves their daughter wants her sitting in a chair unable to enjoy two hours.

She has her own reasons for the way she asks for things, mostly handed to her by somebody, and she is right about at least one thing you have never conceded. And she has no idea that a Thursday evening does what it does.

You are able to love her and be glad of a quiet evening in the same hour, and those two have never once been in competition. The Spirit of God is what lets a person hold two honest things at once, and it is written in Psalm 103 that He remembers we are dust.

He knoweth our frame

Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. (Psalm 103:13, 14, King James Version)

Two things in those verses, and both land exactly on that Thursday.

He knoweth our frame. Frame is a structural word. It is the build of a thing, what it is made of, what load it takes before it starts to give. God is described as knowing the specification, which means He is not surprised by a woman whose shoulders come down on a Thursday.

And then: he remembereth that we are dust. Remembereth. He does not have to be reminded, and He does not forget it during hard seasons.

You are held by a God who knows the specification of the thing He built, and He has never once expected more out of a frame than it was made to carry. It is written in Psalm 103:14 that he knoweth our frame and remembereth that we are dust, which is the written word describing what God takes into account, and the Holy Spirit is the one who applies that to a specific Thursday in a specific chair.

And notice what surrounds it. Like as a father pitieth his children. Pity there is not condescension. It is the tenderness a father has looking at a small child who is at the end of themselves.

That is the posture God is in toward you about the relief. Not disappointment. That.

You are being looked at with tenderness rather than with disappointment, and no honest exhaustion has ever once been read by God as a failure of love. The Spirit of God is the one who carries a father's pity into a front room, and Psalm 103 puts the knowing of the frame immediately after it.

What the relief is telling you

Here is the useful part, because that Thursday was information and it has been treated as evidence.

A body that relaxes that hard has been holding that hard. The size of the relief is a measurement of the load, and it is the most accurate measurement available, because it did not pass through anybody's opinions on the way out.

So the question the Thursday raises is not what kind of daughter am I. It is: what is the size of what I am carrying, and who else knows.

You have been handed an accurate reading, and a body telling the truth about a load has never once been the same as a heart betraying somebody. The Holy Spirit is the one who turns a shame into information, and it is written that He knoweth our frame and remembereth that we are dust.

And there is one thing to do with the reading, which is small and specific. Ask one person for one thing this week.

Not because you cannot cope. Because the Thursday told you what the load is, and a load that size is not meant to sit on one frame, and God is the one who said so about the frame.

You are permitted to ask on the strength of a Thursday, and one specific request has never once been an admission that you are failing anybody. The Spirit of God is what makes an ask possible for somebody who has never made one, and Psalm 103:14 has already settled the question of what a person is made of.