I Do Not Miss Him When He Is Away

He went away for a week in March. Work, or his brother, or something ordinary.

And on about the second night you noticed that the house felt easier, and that you had slept better, and that you were not counting the days.

And then you noticed that you had noticed. And you have been frightened of yourself ever since.

You have not told anybody. Of course you have not. There is no way to say the sentence I did not miss my husband out loud without it sounding like the first line of something much larger.

So it has been sitting in you for a while now, gathering meaning it did not have at the time.

Let me say right away what I am not going to do. I am not going to tell you that the relief means nothing, and I am not going to tell you what it means either, because I do not know your house and neither does anybody writing on the internet.

What I am going to do is stop a feeling from being read as a confession, because that is the specific thing that has been doing damage.

Where a person cannot go

There is a question in Psalm 139 that has been misused as a threat for about three thousand years, and read properly it is the opposite of one.

Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? (Psalm 139:7, King James Version)

The psalm goes on to name every place a person might get to. The heights, the depths, the far side of the sea, the dark. And it concludes that He is in all of them already.

Now hear it as the man writing it meant it. He is not saying you cannot escape surveillance. He is saying there is nowhere a person can get to that God is not already standing in.

You are not somewhere He cannot follow, and Psalm 139 has never once described a place a person could be too honest to be found in. Psalm 139:7 asks where a person could go from His Spirit and answers that there is nowhere, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a comfort rather than a warning.

Which includes the second night of a quiet week in March, and the thought you had in it, and every hour since that you have spent frightened of the thought.

You have been accompanied through the whole of this, including the part you have not said out loud, and there has never once been an hour of it He was absent from. The passage names the darkest place available and puts Him in it, and the Spirit of God is the one who reaches somebody in the part they have hidden.

A reaction is not a confession

Here is the distinction that does the actual work, and I want to be plain about it.

You noticed you slept better. That is a report from a body.

You decided that this revealed the truth about your marriage. That is an interpretation, added afterward, by a frightened person at eleven at night.

Those are not the same thing and only one of them came from the week in March.

You are holding a report from a body and calling it a confession, and Psalm 139 has never once made a rested week into a statement. Psalm 139:7 asks where a person could flee and finds nowhere, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates what a body did from what a marriage is.

Bodies rest when the usual demands stop. That happens with a husband away, a child at a grandparent's, a job on pause. It is not a measurement of love. It is a measurement of load.

And there is something else worth saying, gently. A quiet week may have been easier because carrying the current condition of the marriage in his presence is work. Relief at a pause in that work is not relief at his absence. It is relief at the pause.

You are reading a rested body as a verdict, and no verse has ever once given a night's sleep that authority. Psalm 139:7 puts God in every place a person could get to, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates what a week felt like from what a marriage is.

You were not confessing anything in March, and a reaction has never once been the same as a decision. It is written that there is nowhere His Spirit is not, and the Spirit of God is the one who tells a woman she has not accidentally revealed herself.

Say it, then do the plain thing

So here is the assignment, and it is the same shape as everything on this site, which is on purpose.

Say out loud, alone: the promise is not the feeling. What I promised was presence, and I am present.

Say it to God. Not to him. He does not need to be told about the week in March and nothing on this page is asking you to tell him.

Then do one ordinary thing for him. Not a compensation. Not an apology in disguise. Ordinary. Sort the thing on his list. Call the place about the appointment. Bring in whatever needs bringing in.

You are able to act toward somebody you did not miss, and the action has never once needed a feeling underneath it to be real. Psalm 139:7 puts God in every place including the ones a person is ashamed of, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with somebody making a phone call on a Wednesday.

And when the thought about March comes back, and it will, say the sentence again rather than arguing with the thought.