I Am The Only One Holding This

There is one person holding this together and it is you.

Not in a self-pitying way. As a plain description of who does the repairing after a bad week, who goes back into the room first, who keeps the thing going when it would otherwise stop, and who has been doing all of that on their own for a long time.

And you have told nobody. That part is almost always true. Partly out of loyalty, because saying it out loud would sound like a complaint about a person you promised something to, and partly because the moment you say it to somebody they will have an opinion, and their opinion will be the one you have been carefully avoiding.

Before anything else, and this comes first because it must.

If the person you live with is frightening you, controlling you, hurting you, or making you smaller and more afraid than you were, then none of what follows applies and I am not going to dress that up in the language of promises. That is not a marriage being kept alone, and it is not something to endure faithfully, and nobody who cares about you would tell you to keep absorbing it. Talk to somebody qualified where you live, this week, and if you are in danger contact an emergency service. That is the whole of my counsel on that and I am not going to soften it with anything.

The rest of this is for the other case, which is real and is different: two people who are not harming each other, one of whom stopped putting anything in a while ago.

And I am going to say plainly what I am not doing. I am not going to tell you to hold on. And I am not going to tell you to go. Both of those are decisions about your life made by a stranger with none of the facts, and neither one is mine to make.

No man cared for my soul

There is a psalm written by David in a cave, and there is a line in it so bleak that it is a comfort simply because it is in the book at all.

I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul. (Psalm 142:4, King James Version)

No man cared for my soul.

That is in Scripture. Somebody wrote it, and it was kept, and it was not corrected or balanced or softened by an editor who thought it was too much.

Which means the sentence you have not said to anybody has already been said, by a man God calls a man after His own heart, in a book that people read out in church, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that be permission rather than a comparison.

And then, two verses later, without retracting a word of it: I said, Thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the living. He does not take back the loneliness. He puts something underneath it.

Psalm 142:4 lets the aloneness be stated in full before anything is put under it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that reach somebody who has never said it out loud.

You are not the first person to be this alone in something, and the sentence has never once been too much to say. Psalm 142:4 says no man cared for my soul, kept in Scripture uncorrected, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that permission rather than a comparison.

You are keeping a promise in company rather than in isolation, and Psalm 142 has never once left a person to hold a covenant with nobody looking. It is written that a man said no man cared for my soul and said it upward rather than into the dark, and the Spirit of God is the one who is on the other end of that sentence.

Being seen is not the same as being rescued

Now the honest part, because I am not going to overclaim.

Nothing I have said changes the arrangement in your house. God seeing this does not make the other person start putting something in, and I am not going to imply that it does, because you would know I was writing checks on somebody else's account.

What it changes is whether you are unwitnessed. And that is a smaller thing than rescue and a much larger thing than nothing.

Psalm 142:4 has the loneliness fully stated and then a refuge named, without the circumstances moving one inch in the psalm, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in the gap between those two.

A person carrying something alone and unseen deteriorates. A person carrying something alone and seen is doing something hard. That difference is not a technicality and you will feel it.

You are seen while you are carrying this, and being unwitnessed has never once been part of the arrangement. The written word names a refuge without changing the situation, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes seen a different condition from rescued.

You have a vow that is being held with you and not merely by you, and the arithmetic has never once been one person against a house. Psalm 142:4 has the aloneness said out loud instead of carried, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present the moment it reaches another human being.

Tell one person the truth

So here is the assignment, and I have chosen it deliberately, and it is the only thing I am going to ask you to do.

Tell one trusted person the truth about how alone you are in this.

One person. Somebody who is not going to repeat it, and who is capable of hearing something without immediately telling you what to do about it. A friend of long standing. A pastor, if that is a safe person in your case. A counselor. Psalm 142:4 has the aloneness said out loud rather than kept, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when it reaches one other human being.

And tell them the truth rather than the version. Not it has been a difficult year. Something like: I have been the only one holding this for about four years and nobody knows that.

Here is why this is the assignment and not something else. A thing carried in secret grows, and a thing carried in secret cannot be helped, and the secrecy is doing a specific kind of damage that is different from the loneliness itself. You are not telling them so they can fix it. You are telling them so that the truth exists somewhere outside your own head.

And you are allowed to say to them: I do not want advice, I just need one person to know. Psalm 142:4 is stated and left standing without anybody fixing it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes being heard a complete thing on its own.

Psalm 142:4 has the aloneness spoken out loud rather than kept, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when somebody finally says it to a person.

You are able to say it to one human being, and the truth has never once needed to stay inside you. Psalm 142:4 puts the sentence in the book rather than leaving it unsaid, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present when it gets said to somebody who can hear it.