I Needed Something To Do With The Waiting

It fits in a bag. That was the whole reason.

You needed something that would go in a bag and come out in a corridor without any setting up, and that could be picked up and put down eleven times in an afternoon without anybody thinking anything of it.

So it is small. And it has been going for months, and it is nowhere near finished, and it has been to every appointment.

And here is the thing that has begun to bother you.

It matters more than it should.

You noticed it on the day you left it at home. You were in the parking lot and you realized, and something in your chest dropped in a way that was completely out of proportion to a small object. And you sat in the car and thought, this is not right, I am being ridiculous, there is a person inside that building going through something and I am upset about a bag.

I want to get in front of that thought, because it is not true and it has been going round for a while.

The small thing in your bag is not a competitor to what is happening in that building. It is not a measure of how much you care. And the fact that it matters to you is not evidence that you have got your priorities wrong.

It is a handle. That is all it is. A person sitting in a corridor for four hours holding a piece of somebody else's news needs something to hold, and your hands found one.

Troubled on every side, yet not distressed

Paul writes a sentence to Corinth that is built out of pairs, and the pairs are what make it honest.

We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; (2 Corinthians 4:8, King James Version)

Troubled on every side, yet not distressed.

Look at what he does not do. He does not say the trouble is not real. He says troubled on every side, which is as complete a description of pressure as language gets, and then he refuses to let it become the last word.

And perplexed, but not in despair. He admits he does not understand it. That is a remarkable thing for a man in his position to write down, and he writes it anyway.

You are permitted to be troubled and perplexed at once, and 2 Corinthians 4:8 puts both of those in the same sentence rather than choosing between them. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes an honest line from a hard letter and lays it down in a hospital corridor with a bag on the next seat.

And notice the size of the second half of each pair. Not distressed. Not in despair. He is not claiming to be fine. He is naming a floor underneath him.

You have a floor under you that is not the same thing as being fine, and it is already settled in the written word that the trouble and the floor exist together. His Spirit is the one who says that over a woman who has been requiring herself to be fine.

A handle is not a distraction

Now let me be careful with the small thing itself, because I think it has been misfiled.

It has been filed as a distraction, which is why it embarrasses you. A distraction is something that takes attention away from what matters, and needing one while somebody else is in a scanner feels shameful.

But it is not doing that. Watch what actually happens. A few rows go by and nothing about that room has receded. The appointment, the corridor, the possibilities, all of it stays fully present. Nothing has been taken away.

What has changed is that your hands have somewhere to be while you sit inside something you cannot do anything about. That is not attention leaving. That is a body being given a job small enough to be possible.

And this: how far along that thing is after four months is not a measure of anything. Not of how you are coping, not of how much you love the person in that building.

You are not distracted from anything, and heaven has never once asked a person to sit in a corridor with empty hands to prove that they care. 2 Corinthians 4:8 keeps the trouble and the not despairing side by side, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a woman be in both at once.

And do not apologize for it. Not to the person you are waiting for, not to a nurse who comments on it kindly, not to yourself in a parking lot.

You have permission to carry a handle, and this is yours: nothing in that verse requires a person to face pressure with nothing in their hands. It is written in 2 Corinthians 4:8 that we are perplexed but not in despair, and the Holy Spirit is the one who supplies what a body needs while a mind is somewhere else entirely.

Twenty minutes, and no apology

So here is the ask, and it comes with an instruction about your mouth.

This week, take twenty minutes on the small thing, deliberately, not in a corridor. At home, sitting down, on purpose.

That matters because it takes the thing out of the category of coping and puts it back in the category of making. Doing it on an ordinary evening says something quietly that arguing with yourself in a parking lot never will.

You are troubled and not distressed at the same time, and 2 Corinthians 4:8 refuses to choose between those two. The Holy Spirit is the one who puts a floor under a woman who is not fine and is not falling either.

And apologize to nobody. If somebody sees it and says something, say thank you. Do not say it is only to keep my hands busy, and do not say it is nothing much, and do not explain the appointments.

It will be poor, and it will be four months of poor work rather than four months of progress, because a thing made in eleven interrupted pieces in a corridor comes out that way. Leave it exactly as it is.

You are steadied doing it on purpose in your own front room, and 2 Corinthians 4:8 is the ground under that. The written word holds the pressure and the floor together in one sentence, and the Spirit of God is present with a woman working on something small that has been to every appointment.