They Said He Is Fine And I Do Not Believe It

The meeting was good news.

That is what makes this so awkward to explain to anybody. There is nothing to report. He is doing fine, they said. No concerns. Really, honestly, fine.

And you drove home with the thing still in you, exactly where it was before you went in, and now you cannot even talk about it, because what would you say. My son is doing fine and I am worried about him.

So it has gone underground. And a worry underground is worse than a worry above ground, because it has stopped being a thing you can look at and become a background hum.

I want to take it seriously for a minute, without agreeing with it and without dismissing it, because I think both of those have already been done to you and neither helped.

Pour out your heart before him

There is an instruction in Psalm 62 with a specific picture in it.

Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us. (Psalm 62:8, King James Version)

Pour out. Not summarize. Not present a reasonable case. Pour out, which is what you do with a container when you want the whole of it empty.

And it does not say pour out your heart once it is coherent. It does not say bring your justified concerns. The instruction has no quality control on it at all.

You have somewhere to put the whole of it, and no part of that has ever once depended on the worry being reasonable. Psalm 62:8 invites the pouring out without any test applied first, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that available to somebody holding a thing they cannot defend.

And notice the last clause, because it is doing structural work. God is a refuge for us. A refuge is a place you go to, not a verdict you receive. It is a location.

Which is exactly what you have not got. You have a worry and no location for it, because the only place it could have gone has now officially told you it is not needed.

You were never left without somewhere to take it, and there has never once been a moment when a refuge required the trouble to be verified first. The written word names a place rather than an answer, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a place out of a room where nobody argues with you.

Why reassurance does not land

Here is the mechanism, and it explains a lot more than this one meeting.

Reassurance answers a question. Your worry is not a question. It is a state, and it has been in you longer than the meeting existed.

So when somebody says he is fine, they are answering something you did not ask, and the thing you did ask has never actually been said out loud by anybody, including you.

You are able to see why a good answer bounced, and no answer has ever once been able to land on a question that was never put. Psalm 62:8 tells a person to pour out rather than to summarize, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows somebody the difference between a query and a state.

And there is a second thing here, and it is more important than it sounds.

A parent's worry is not always predictive. Sometimes it is, and everybody has a story about a mother who knew. But very often it is simply the cost of caring about somebody whose whole future is outside your control, and it attaches itself to whatever is nearest.

School is nearest. So it goes there. But it is not really about school and no amount of school news will settle it.

You have been trying to close something with the wrong currency, and school news has never once been able to pay for a worry that is not about school. The written word offers a refuge instead of an explanation, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes what is actually being carried.

You were never being difficult in that meeting, and a person carrying something nobody has named has never once been able to accept an answer to a different question. Psalm 62:8 invites the whole contents without requiring them to be sorted first, and it is the Holy Spirit who does the sorting afterward rather than before.

Say it out loud, in full, to nobody

So here is the thing to do, and you need to be on your own for it.

Tonight, in the car or standing at the sink or on the back step, say the worry out loud. All of it. In the wording you actually think it in, not the wording you would use at a school.

And say it to God, which is the point of the exercise, but say it in a real voice with real sentences rather than as a tidy prayer.

Do not summarize. Do not qualify it. Do not add I know this is silly at the beginning or I know he is fine at the end, because those two clauses are what has been stopping it from ever being fully said.

You have somewhere the unqualified version is welcome, and no clause of apology has ever once been required at either end of it. Psalm 62:8 says pour out and adds no condition to the instruction, and the Spirit of God is the one who receives the version nobody would defend in a meeting.

It will take about ninety seconds and most people find they get to the end of it and there is a bit they did not know was in there.

Psalm 62:8 says pour out your heart before him and calls God a refuge rather than a verdict, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is at a sink with somebody talking out loud at half past nine.

You are permitted to say the unreasonable version, and a worry said in full has never once been required to be defensible. The written word puts no test in front of the pouring out, and the Spirit of God is the one who receives the part you have never said to anybody.

You have somewhere for it to go tonight, and it has never once depended on anybody agreeing with you first. Psalm 62:8 names a refuge as a location rather than as an opinion, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that location real in an ordinary kitchen.