The School Called Me At Work

You did not recognize the number.

And you answered it the way people answer numbers they do not recognize at half past one on a working day, which is with a small drop in the stomach before anybody has spoken.

And it was fine. That is the thing. Nine times out of ten it is genuinely fine, and even the tenth time it is usually a thing that can be sorted out.

But you were standing somewhere you could not react. In a corridor, or by a machine, or outside a room you had to go straight back into. And so the whole thing went in and got stored, unprocessed, and you carried it through the rest of the shift and into the car and into the house.

And by the time you walked through the door it had been growing for four hours in the dark.

Be careful for nothing

There is an instruction in Philippians that is famous and is usually read too fast to be useful.

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. (Philippians 4:6, King James Version)

Careful there is older English for full of care. Anxious. And the instruction is not simply do not be anxious, which would be useless advice to hand a man in a corridor.

Look at what replaces it. Let your requests be made known. Made known. Said. Articulated to somebody.

The instruction is not a mood change. It is a transfer, and it works by putting a thing into words and handing the words over.

You have been given a method rather than a mood, and no verse anywhere has ever once asked a man to simply stop feeling something. Philippians 4:6 replaces the carrying with a specific act of making known, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that available in a parking lot at six in the evening.

And the word thing matters too. In every thing. Not in the large things, not in the spiritual things. A phone call about a scuffle at lunchtime qualifies.

You were never told your situation was too small to be handed over, and nothing has ever once been disqualified for being ordinary. The written word says in every thing, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that include a call from a school office.

What four hours of carrying does

Here is the mechanics of it, and it is worth knowing because it explains the evening that followed.

A thing that is not put into words does not stay the same size. It cannot, because there are no edges on it. What survives is a tone of voice and a fragment and a feeling, and for four hours the mind fills in around them.

By six o'clock you are not carrying the call any more. You are carrying a version of it that you built.

You have been carrying something you assembled, and the original call has never once been as long as what you have been holding. Philippians 4:6 moves the thing into words as the first act, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates a report from the construction around it.

And here is the cost that lands on the child, which is worth being honest about.

You come through the door with four hours of it in you, and the person in front of you is somebody who has had one difficult afternoon and probably thinks the whole thing is over.

So they meet a parent who has been building something since half past one. And whatever you say first arrives with all four hours behind it.

You are able to arrive with only what actually happened, and an afternoon of assembling has never once been required to be brought into the house. The written word replaces anxiety with articulation, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes the putting into words possible before the engine starts.

You were never at fault for taking it in a corridor, and nobody has ever once been able to process a phone call while standing in one. Philippians 4:6 gives a method for later rather than a demand for the moment, and it is the Holy Spirit who supplies the moment when it comes.

Say it out loud before you start the car

So here is the thing to do, and it happens in the car, before the key turns.

Say out loud the one sentence they actually said. Not what it might have meant. What was said.

He was involved in something at lunchtime and they have dealt with it. That is the sentence, or whatever yours is.

Then say what you are going to do about it. Which may well be: nothing, tonight.

That is the whole exercise, and it takes about fifteen seconds, and you have to say it out loud rather than think it, because thinking it is what you have been doing for four hours and it is what built the version.

And if you pray, and I would, hand it over in the same fifteen seconds. Philippians 4:6 says let your requests be made known unto God, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in a parked car with a man saying two sentences to nobody.

You are permitted to put a thing down before you drive, and a car park has never once been the wrong place to hand something over. The written word makes articulation the act that replaces the anxiety, and the Spirit of God is the one who meets a person in a stationary car.

You have the whole of tonight's repair in fifteen seconds, and it has never once required the call to have been about something smaller. Philippians 4:6 says in every thing, which admits a lunchtime scuffle without argument, and it is the Holy Spirit who receives what gets handed over.