The plane goes down the length of the board and a curl of ash comes up off the blade the way it has ten thousand times, and it is only when the stroke ends that he realizes he was not breathing.
Tuesday morning at the shared workshop, the one in the old bus depot where nine men and two women rent a bench each and share the tool wall. The radio is on the shelf where it always is. The kettle is on. Somebody is running the bandsaw at the far end and somebody else is arguing with a drawer that will not sit square. He is at his own bench, the one nearest the roller door, for the first morning in a long time, and his hands went to the plane before he had decided anything, and set the iron, and picked up the board, and started, and every part of that was the same as it ever was.
Except the breath. He notices it on the second stroke, and again on the third. His shoulders are up round his ears. His jaw is set. He is planing a piece of ash for a box lid, in a warm shed with a kettle on and the radio going, and his whole body is braced as if the phone were about to ring. That is what the long season did. Months of it: the appointments, the waiting on results, the ordinary Tuesdays that turned out not to be ordinary, the way good news came wrapped in a sentence that started with however. His body learned to wait for the next blow. And it has not unlearned it. He is standing at the one place on earth that has always been rest to him and he is holding his breath over a board he has planed a thousand times, and the man at the next bench is telling a story about his grandson, and nobody can see a thing wrong.
You know the bench. Yours might be a garden or a piano or a kitchen, the place your hands know, and you have gone back to it after the long season and found that your hands still know it and something else in you does not. You brace. You cannot take a plain Tuesday at face value. You read however into sentences that do not have one. No test shows it, no scan will ever find it, and nobody has once asked you about it, because everybody has been asking about the body.
Spirit and soul and body
I read the Word the way I read a set of drawings, and Paul, carried by the Spirit, drew this one with three parts on it, and I want you to see all three, because you have been shown one.
And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.1 Thessalonians 5:23
Spirit, soul, body. Whole. Not one part patched and the rest left as it was found. When Paul asks the God of peace to make a person whole he lists everything a person is, and he does not put the body first as if the rest were an afterthought, and he does not leave the body off as if it did not matter to God. Three parts, one prayer, and the God of peace over all of it.
Now here is what has been done to you, and I do not say it to blame anybody, because they were doing what they were trained to do. For months every eye on you has been on the body. The reports were about the body. The prayers were about the body, and rightly, and I am going to keep praying about the body before this page is done. But there is a part of you Paul named that no report has ever mentioned, and it took the season as hard as anything did, and it is standing at a bench holding its breath.
You are a whole person before God, spirit and soul and body, and He is at work in all three of you and not only in the one the scan can see. That is written, and it is His Spirit, the same Spirit who dwells in a person, who reaches the part that has no test.
Both, and never instead
I have to say the next thing plainly, and I am going to say it here in the middle of the page and not tuck it in at the end where a man says the things he is embarrassed by.
God heals. He heals the body. I believe it and I say it and I am saying it over your body now. And I do not promise you the result. Nobody who has read this Book honestly promises the result; the switch is ours to flip and the current is His to send, and He sends it as He wills, and some are healed and some, in this life, are not, and I do not have His reasons and I do not pretend to. What I refuse to do, and what this page refuses to do, is hand you the healing of the inside of you as the thing you get instead. It is not a consolation prize. It is not the runner-up ribbon for a body that did not get better. It is not God changing the subject.
It is additional. It is the second and third parts of a three-part prayer, prayed alongside the first, and never in its place. If your body is healed, this still needs doing, because a healed body can carry a braced soul for years. If your body is not healed, this still needs doing, and it is not the substitute for what you are still asking. Both. And He never once asked you to choose.
You have a God who heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds, and He is binding now, in the part of you no machine looks at, while you are still asking Him about the part it does. Psalm 147 says it, and it is the Holy Spirit who does the binding, and He does not wait for the other prayer to be answered before He begins this one.
What the season did, named
Now the pit, exactly, because a wound that is not named is not handed over; it is carried.
The season taught you something, and it taught it to your body and to your soul at once, and the lesson was: brace. Wait for the blow. Do not trust the Tuesday. That is not weakness and it is not a lack of faith and it is not something you did wrong; it is what months of however do to a person, and Scripture does not pretend otherwise. David wrote a whole psalm about his bones wasting away while he kept quiet (Psalm 32:3), and he wrote another one that says God restores the soul (Psalm 23:3), and he did not think those two contradicted each other. He named the wound and he named the Restorer in the same breath.
So name it. Not the condition; nobody on this page is going to name a condition and neither do you have to. Name what the season did to you, the person. It taught me to brace. It made me flinch at the phone. It took the joy out of the bench. It made me a man who cannot hear good news. One sentence, out loud, and specific, because a general wound is handed over generally and a named one is handed over by name.
You are not the bracing, and you were never meant to carry it as if it were who you are; it is a thing the season did, and the God who restores the soul is restoring yours. It is written that He restores; and it is His Spirit, the Comforter, who is at work in the exact place the flinch lives.
And I have to say this next thing straight, because the season sometimes does more than teach a person to brace. If it has taken you somewhere darker than bracing, if it has left you not wanting to be here, then you say that to a human being today and not tomorrow. In the United States, call or text 988. Anywhere else, your local crisis line, and one person who can sit with you tonight. A page is not enough for that. You deserve a person beside you.
Here is what happens now, at the bench, with the plane in your hand and the radio on and your shoulders up round your ears.
You are not going to argue yourself out of the bracing, and I am not going to tell you to relax, because a man cannot be told to breathe. You are going to name what the season did to you, out loud, in one sentence, and you are going to hand that one thing over to God by name, specifically, and then you are going to pick up the plane and take the next stroke. And you are going to keep asking Him about the body, tonight and tomorrow, because this is both and never instead.
You have been given a God who makes a person whole, spirit and soul and body, and He is at work now in the part of you the season reached and no report ever will. That is 1 Thessalonians 5:23, and it is Psalm 147:3, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries a named thing out of a man's chest and does not hand it back to him.
Declare this over yourself
Say these three out loud, at the bench or wherever your bench is, with your shoulders wherever they are. You have the standing to speak them because Christ is in you, spirit and soul and body, and the Spirit who restores was given to you and not earned by you; the authority sits there and never sat in your having recovered. Scripture is the ground under the words and the Holy Spirit carries them, and He is not waiting for your breath to be steady. Jesus said that whoever speaks to a mountain and does not doubt in his heart has what he says, and the mountain at this bench is a habit of bracing that has been let to call itself your character. Speak to the bench, then to the bracing, then to Him. What He does with your body, and when, and how He answers, is His to decide, and I do not promise it, and the healing of the part no scan reads is not waiting on it.
- Bench I came back to, you are watching a man hold his breath over a job his hands know by heart, and you are watching him breathe out. Scripture says the God of peace makes a person whole, spirit and soul and body, all three, and I am not settling for repairs to one.
- Bracing that this season taught me, you were a habit for a season and you are not who I am, and I hand you back in the name of Jesus. It is written that He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds, and the Spirit is doing the binding now, in the part no scan reads.
- Lord, You are healing the part of me no machine looks at, and I am still asking You over this body too, both, and I thank You that You never made me choose. I have named the thing this season did to me and I have handed it to You, and I am breathing out at the bench.
1 Thessalonians 5:23
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