It Was More Than One Thing

Everybody else gets a clean line.

The month of the accident. The year of the illness. One cause, one date, one sentence a person can say when somebody asks.

You have tried to find yours and there is not one. What you have is three things that arrived within about eight months of each other, and none of them alone would have done it, and all three together took everything you had.

And here is what that has done to you, and it is subtle and it is expensive. Because there is no single cause, you have concluded there was no cause. A reason has to be nameable, in your head. If it cannot be said in one sentence at a kitchen table it does not count as a reason, it is just a list of ordinary difficulties that other people also have.

So you have three legitimate causes and you dismiss all three of them, because each one alone looks survivable, and you never add them up.

That is the arithmetic error I want to undo tonight.

Deep calleth unto deep

There is a line in the Psalms that is the most accurate description of overlapping trouble I know of anywhere.

Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me. (Psalm 42:7, King James Version)

Deep calls to deep.

That is not one wave. That is the specific thing where one difficulty calls up another, and the second one arrives while the first is still in the room, and by the time the third comes the person underneath has no way of telling them apart.

And the psalm does not tidy it into a single cause either. It says waves and billows, plural, gone over me. He does not choose one to name. He names the whole weather.

That is written by somebody who understood exactly your situation, and he did not solve it by picking a favorite trouble.

You are not without a reason because you have several, and Psalm 42:7 has never once required trouble to arrive one at a time to be named. It is written as deep calling unto deep with waves and billows in the plural, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person describe overlapping weather without having to reduce it.

You have three true reasons and have been declining to count any of them. The word describes a whole sea rather than a single wave, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes an honest description seriously without demanding a headline.

Three things is not an excuse, it is a description

Here is the mechanism I want to name, because it has been running quietly for years.

When somebody asks why the house is like this, you begin to answer and you hear yourself listing. Well, my father was ill, and then the job changed, and then we had the thing with the car and the money.

And halfway through the list you stop, because listing sounds like excuse making. One reason sounds like a reason. Three reasons sounds like somebody scrambling.

You are allowed to write a season beside each one instead of a date, and no cause here has ever once needed a calendar entry to be real. Psalm 42:7 names the whole weather rather than one storm, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person describe a sea in the plural without tidying it into a headline.

So the list gets cut off, and out comes something like, oh, I let it go. And the person listening accepts that, because it is simpler, and now there are two people in the room believing a false thing.

I want to say clearly that a list is not a scramble. A list is what the truth looks like when more than one thing happened, and it is only embarrassing because a culture that likes clean stories has taught you to be ashamed of a complicated one.

You were never making excuses, and three overlapping causes has never once been less true than one dramatic one. Psalm 42:7 names waves and billows together without singling any of them out, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a complicated truth stay complicated.

So tonight we write all three.

You are permitted to name every one of them, and naming all three has never once been the same as looking for sympathy. It is written that the whole sea went over him and the psalm does not apologize for it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a person finally stops abbreviating their own life.

Write down all three

So here is the whole of what I am asking.

Write down the three things. All of them. In whatever order they arrive in your head.

Beside each one, write roughly when. A season is fine. Spring two years ago. The autumn after.

Then look at the three of them stacked on one piece of paper.

You are describing weather and not making excuses, and a list has never once been less true than a headline. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a complicated account stay complicated, and Psalm 42:7 names waves and billows in the plural without apologizing for a single one of them.

That is the entire task. Nothing gets cleaned.

You are able to see the whole weather at once tonight, and seeing it has never once required you to pick which part counted. Psalm 42:7 puts waves and billows in one line without choosing between them, and the Spirit of God is present at a table with a pen and three honest lines on it.