My Body Remembers That Corridor

It happens before you have thought anything.

You come through the double doors and there is the smell, which is the same smell in every school building in the world, and something in your chest closes about an inch.

And you are a grown woman with a job and a car and a mortgage, and you are here about a book bag, and your body has gone into a state that has nothing to do with book bags.

And then you spend the next four minutes managing that while also trying to have a normal conversation with somebody young and pleasant who has no idea any of it is happening.

You have been calling this irrational for years. I want to stop you doing that, because it is not irrational, and calling it that is costing you the only useful thing about it.

The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart

There is a line in Psalm 34 that is precise in a way people miss.

The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. (Psalm 34:18, King James Version)

Nigh unto. Near to. That is a statement about proximity, not about outcome.

And look at who is being described: those that are of a broken heart. Not those who have recovered. Not those who have processed it. Those who are, in the present tense, still in that condition.

So the nearness is offered during, not after. That is the whole point of the verse and it is why it has survived three thousand years.

You have somebody near in the corridor rather than waiting at the other end of it, and nearness has never once been offered on condition of recovery. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes that true inside a school building on a Thursday, and Psalm 34:18 describes the present condition and the present nearness in the same sentence.

And notice broken heart is a physical metaphor. Scripture keeps doing this. It does not describe the trouble as an idea. It describes it as something in a body.

You were never dealing with a thought, and no verse has ever once treated what happens in a chest as a failure of reasoning. The Spirit of God is the one who validates what a woman has been calling irrational, and the written word names the condition in the body rather than in the argument.

Your body is not being irrational

Here is the accurate description, and I want to give it to you plainly, because accuracy is more use to you than reassurance.

Your body learned that building. It learned the light, the sound of a door on a closer, the particular resonance of a hard floor, and it learned what those things preceded.

That learning was correct at the time. It was doing its job. And bodies do not retire that kind of learning on a schedule, because the whole point of it is to be faster than thinking.

So what happens at those doors is not a malfunction. It is a very old and very fast piece of recognition, running exactly as designed, on a building that is not the same building.

You are carrying a system that has never once been broken, and it has only ever been slightly out of date about one address. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person stop calling their own body a liar, and Psalm 34:18 locates the trouble in the heart and the nearness right beside it.

And the reason calling it irrational is expensive is this. Irrational means there is nothing to do. You cannot answer an irrational thing, you can only be embarrassed by it and try to hide it.

But a body that has recognized something can be told, in the plainest terms, what it is actually standing in.

You have something to say to your own body, and nobody has ever once been able to argue a chest into unclenching. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a plain sentence do what an argument cannot, and the written word describes God as near to the person while they are still in it.

You were never required to have finished with that corridor before you walked down it, and there has never once been a version of this that demanded you be over it first. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with somebody halfway along a hard floor, and Psalm 34:18 offers the nearness in the present condition.

Tell your body the year

So here is the thing to do, and it is two sentences said quietly to yourself.

Before you open the school bag tonight, and before you walk into that building next time, say out loud what the date is and name the room around you.

It is the eleventh. I am in my own kitchen.

That is genuinely the whole exercise, and I know how it sounds.

You have the right to hand your own body a fact, and a plain sentence said out loud has never once required anybody's permission. The Spirit of God is the one who stands beside a woman saying a date to an empty kitchen, and Psalm 34:18 comes near to the heart itself rather than to the reasoning about it.

Here is why it works. A body that is recognizing an old room is running on pattern rather than on facts. Facts delivered out loud, in your own voice, in the present tense, are the only kind of information that particular system will take.

And the reason to do it at home as well as at the school is that the corridor is not only in the corridor. It is in the bag, and in the letter, and in the tone of somebody's voice on the phone.

Psalm 34:18 puts the nearness right beside the present condition, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in a kitchen with a woman telling herself what year it is.

You are permitted to speak to your own body in plain facts, and a person saying the date out loud has never once been a person losing their grip. The Spirit of God is the one who is near while the sentence gets said, and the written word attends to the broken heart directly rather than to the reasoning around it.

You have a room in the present tense available to stand in, and it has never once required the old one to stop existing. The Holy Spirit is the one who supplies the presence the old corridor never had, and Psalm 34:18 names the nearness as a present fact.