Empty Hands at the Counter

She is standing at the counter of the country store with nothing in her hands, and the girl at the register is waiting on her, kindly, not hurrying her at all, and that is somehow the worst part.

She drove down here for something. Four miles, past the church and the low water bridge, with the window down because the truck has no air. She came in through the screen door and it slapped behind her the way it does, and she walked the whole store, the one aisle and then the other, and she got to the counter and stopped.

The store smells like it always has: coffee going since morning, the cardboard box of peaches by the door, floor wax and old wood. There is a ledger book on the counter with a rubber band around it and a jar of pickled eggs nobody buys. The girl at the register is maybe nineteen and she has the good manners of somebody raised right, so she just waits, and she smiles, and she says take your time.

And here is why she cannot remember. She has not been in the store. She has been in a room that does not exist yet, having a conversation that has not happened, with a person who has not called. Four days of it now. She has run that call eleven ways. She has picked out the exact words she thinks they will use. She has planned what her face will do. She has planned what she will say to her daughter afterward, and she has planned both versions of that, and then she has gone back and done the whole thing over.

So she drove four miles with her mind in that room, and she walked the aisles in that room, and now here she stands at the counter, empty handed, in front of a girl who is being nice about it.

That is you, perhaps, at your own counter. However many days into it you are. The thing itself has not happened yet and it has already had four days of your life, and you would be embarrassed to tell anybody how much of the last ninety-six hours you have spent in a conversation nobody has had.

Two kinds of afraid

There is a psalm that names your two fears separately, and I think the separating is the kindness in it.

Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day.Psalm 91:5

Terror by night is the vague one. It has no shape and no schedule. It comes at four in the morning and it is about everything at once and you cannot answer it because it never asked you a question.

The arrow by day is the other kind, and it is yours this week. An arrow is specific. You can see it coming. It has a direction and it has a time on it, and yours has a day of the week attached and possibly an hour. That is a different animal from a nameless dread, and the psalm treats it as different, and names both, and does not pretend one is the other.

Now read what it says and what it does not say. It does not say no arrow flies. Somewhere behind that verse is a man who has watched arrows fly. What it says is what you shall not be afraid of, which means the psalm is talking about the four days and not about the phone call.

You are inside a verse that was written for the days between, and it is talking about you at that counter and not only about you afterward. Psalm 91:5 is where that is written, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a soldier's psalm and lays it down in a country store on a Tuesday afternoon.

The room that does not exist yet

Here is the thing I want to name, and I want to name it without one ounce of blame in it, because there is none in me about this.

Rehearsing is not a character flaw and it is not a failure of faith. It is what a mind does when it loves somebody and cannot get information. Your mind ran the call eleven ways because it is trying to protect you by having the shock in advance. That is not wickedness. It just does not work, and it charges you eleven times for a thing that will happen once.

And there is a cost nobody adds up. You paid four miles of a summer road for that room. You paid the smell of coffee and the peaches by the door and the girl at the register being kind to you. Those were real and they were today and they were given to you, and the room took them.

So let me tell you the one true thing about the call that I actually know, and then let me refuse to tell you the thing I do not.

The one true thing: God already knows what that call will say, and He is not waiting to find out. He is not on the far side of Thursday, learning it with you. He is in Thursday and He is in this Tuesday, and He is not braced.

And now the refusal, and hear me be plain. I am not going to tell you the news will be good. I am not going to tell you it will be bad. Nobody writing on a screen knows what your call says, and a person who tells you otherwise has sold you something. God heals, and I will say that on every page I write because Scripture says it and it is His character. And I do not promise you the result. Both, together, in the same breath, right here where the heat is. If the call goes the way you fear, nothing on this page turns into a lie and nothing about you turned out to be the problem. Nobody here failed to have enough faith. That sentence is not in the book and it is not true.

You have a God in the days between who is not waiting to find out, and He is with you in both directions. Psalm 91:5 sets the fear down rather than the arrow, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that difference something you can stand on at a counter with empty hands.

And one more thing, plainly, because I mean it. If these four days have taken you somewhere darker than tired, if some part of you has caught itself thinking everybody would manage better without you, tell a living human being today and not tomorrow. In the United States, call or text 988 and somebody picks up. Anywhere else, your local crisis line, and one person who can sit with you tonight. A page cannot do that. A person can, and you deserve one.