It Was Never Really About Them

It was about a shoe in a doorway. Or a cupboard left open. Something with no weight to it at all.

And what came out was not about the shoe. You knew it while it was happening, which is the strange part, because knowing did not slow it down at all.

Underneath it was a phone call from the morning. A number on a piece of paper. Something somebody said to you in a corridor on Tuesday that you have not been able to put down.

None of which the person in the doorway had anything to do with. They were nine, and they had a shoe, and they walked into a room where the level was already at the top.

I am not going to give you a way to manage the pressure. That is a technique and this is not a place that hands those out. And I am not going to tell you they will not remember it, because I do not know that.

Pour out your heart before him

There is a line in Psalm 62 that tells a person what to do with a full bucket, and it does it in six words.

Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us. (Psalm 62:8, King James Version)

Pour out. Not describe. Not summarize. Not present in a reasonable order with the worst part edited.

Pour is what you do with a container that is already full and heavy, and it names the physical fact of the thing rather than the tidiness of it.

You have somewhere to pour the whole of it, and none of it has ever needed to be sorted out before it went anywhere. Psalm 62:8 says pour out your heart before him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who puts that in front of somebody who emptied a full bucket over a nine year old at seven o'clock.

And look at what comes after. God is a refuge for us.

A refuge is a place, not a mood. It is somewhere you go with what you are carrying, and the whole point of one is that it holds without needing you to have arrived in good order.

You are able to arrive with all of it exactly as it is, and there has never once been a required condition on the way in. It is written in Psalm 62:8 that God is a refuge for us, and the Spirit of God is the one who receives what a person has not yet made sense of.

The bucket was full before they walked in

Now let me be exact about what happened, because there is a wrong lesson available here and most people take it.

The wrong lesson is that this was a temper problem. That is not what tonight showed. Tonight showed a container that had been filling since about nine in the morning with nowhere to go.

By seven the level was at the top, and a shoe tipped it. The shoe did not fill it. Almost nothing that tips a bucket is what filled it.

Psalm 62:8 gives the pouring a direction on purpose, because a full container empties somewhere, and if it is not poured out deliberately it goes over the side onto whoever is standing closest.

You are not carrying a temper, and what happened at seven has never once been about the size of the shoe. Psalm 62:8 sends the pouring toward God rather than leaving it to find its own way out, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives a direction to something that was going to move anyway.

And here is the plain thing, because by now it has turned into something about you.

That evening is not a verdict. It is not a score, it is not a grade, and it is not evidence about how much you love the nine year old with the shoe.

It is a description of a day that had nowhere to go and a person who had nowhere to put it.

You have not been shown up as somebody who takes it out on their children, and one full evening has never been a report on a whole household. The written word offers a refuge in Psalm 62:8 rather than a judgment, and the Spirit of God is the one who refuses to read a spill as a character.

Say the actual thing, not the tidy version

Here is the part that most people skip, and it is the difference between this helping and this being a nice idea.

When you go and pour it out, say the actual thing.

Not, Lord, I have had a difficult day, please help me with my patience. That is the tidy version and it is a summary written for an audience, and God is not an audience.

You are talking to somebody who is not an audience, and none of this has ever needed to be performed for Him. Psalm 62:8 tells the people to pour rather than to present, and the Holy Spirit is the one who receives the version nobody else would be handed.

The actual thing is: I am frightened about the money. Or: what she said on Tuesday made me feel about eleven years old. Or: I do not know how we are going to manage in March.

That is what pour out means. It means the ugly specific one that you would not say to a friend, said out loud, in a normal voice, in an empty room.

Psalm 62:8 does not ask for the presentable version, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in the ugly specific sentence rather than in the summary.

You are free to say the ugly specific thing out loud, and it has never once had to be made presentable first. Psalm 62:8 says pour out your heart before him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who receives a sentence a person would not say to anybody with a face.