The First Monday Back

She got there at twenty to nine so that she would already be sitting down before anybody else arrived. She had worked that out on the drive: the walking in was going to be the hard part, and if she was already at her desk there would be no walking in.

Somebody had washed her mug. That was the first thing. Three weeks of it sitting in the back of the cupboard and somebody had run it through and put it on the shelf with the others, and she stood in the kitchen holding it and could not have told you why that was the thing that got her.

Then the meeting. Nine o'clock, the room with the long table and the blind that never goes all the way down, so a bar of sun travels along the far wall while people talk.

She has a pen. She picked it up on the way past the printer, because a person in a meeting has a pen.

For fifty minutes she holds it.

Somebody runs through the quarter. Somebody else has a spreadsheet up and is apologizing for the formatting. Her manager says it is really good to have you back, and means it, and everybody does that small warm thing with their faces, and she says thank you, and it comes out exactly right, and she is quietly amazed at herself.

She writes the date at the top of the page. She underlines it.

That is everything she writes in fifty minutes.

Because there is a part of her sitting about four inches behind her own eyes, watching all of this happen, and what that part is saying is: they think this is Monday. A woman across the table is describing a problem with the booking system as though the booking system matters, and it does matter, it really does, and three weeks ago she would have had opinions about it.

Under the table, out of sight, her left hand is holding the edge of her chair.

Not gripping. Just holding. It has been holding since about five past nine.

At ten to ten it finishes and everyone stands up, and she stands up too, and somebody catches her by the door and says how are you doing, really, and she says yeah, good, getting there, and goes to the kitchen and runs the tap and stands there while it runs.

That is you.

Maybe it was not a meeting. Maybe it was a shift, or a school gate, or a checkout line, or a phone call you had to make in your work voice. But you have been out among people with your face doing the right thing, and nobody in the room knew, and afterwards you sat in the car for a while before you turned the key.

Nobody is going to explain any of that to you here. There is a kind of help that arrives with a reason in its hand, and I am not bringing you one, because I do not have one, and I would not hand you a reason I made up on the way over.

Nobody in that room knew

Let me put the first thing down before anything else, because it is the thing most people in your position hold quietly against themselves.

Keeping your face right for fifty minutes was not dishonesty. It was not strength either, and it was not you being brave, and it was very obviously not you being fine. It was a body doing what a body does in a room it has to get through. There is no verdict in it, in either direction.

Nothing about the last three weeks is a report card. Not the meeting, not the blank page, not the sentence that came out exactly right when you did not mean one word of it.

Now look at where Isaiah puts the weight. He is speaking to people who are in the middle of something, not to people who have come out the other side.

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.Isaiah 41:10

Read it for the verbs. Strengthen. Help. Uphold. Every one of them has God as the subject. Not one of them is a task handed to the frightened person. The fear is named first, without argument, and then every remaining clause is about what somebody else is doing.

You are upheld this morning by a hand that is not yours, and it was under you at five past nine when your own hand went to the edge of the chair. That is not me being kind to you. Isaiah 41:10 puts every verb on God's side of the line, and it is the Holy Spirit who turns a sentence that old into something a person can feel under them on a specific Monday.

The word behind uphold is not about being carried around like luggage. It means holding something up from underneath so that it does not go down. The hand is under. Not over, not steering, not watching from a distance to see how you do. Under.

You have a footing in this that you did not manufacture and cannot lose by having a bad Monday. What is written says I will strengthen thee, which is God speaking about His own action and not setting a standard for you to reach, and His Spirit is the one who carries a written line across into an actual nine o'clock in an actual room.

And notice what Isaiah does not say. He does not say for how long. He does not say what the end of it looks like, and he does not say what it is for.

You have a hold on you that does not depend on ever being told why this happened. Isaiah 41:10 gives the presence and never once gives the reason, which is worth leaving alone rather than filling in, and the Holy Spirit is the One who keeps a person company inside a question that stays open.

The hand that was already there

Here is something small enough to carry into the week.

Your left hand went to the edge of that chair at five past nine and you did not decide to do it. Some part of you went looking for something that was not moving, found the nearest solid thing, and held on.

That instinct is not weakness. It is accuracy. It is a body telling the truth about the room while the mouth is busy saying thank you.

The chair edge held. And underneath the chair edge, and underneath the whole morning, there was a hand that had been there since before you got dressed.

You were held through all fifty of those minutes, and there was not one of them you got through on your own. The promise as written does not switch on when a person starts coping: it opens with fear thou not, for I am with thee, addressed to somebody who is frightened at the time of speaking, and the Spirit of God is what keeps that presence from being merely an idea.

You have nothing to prove in the next room you are dreading, and you were not being graded in the last one. Scripture never once makes the upholding conditional on the composure of the person being upheld, and it is the Holy Spirit, and not your performance in a meeting, who keeps somebody standing on a day like this one.