It Is My Balance That Went

It was not falling. You have not fallen.

That is the part that makes it hard to explain to anybody, and it is why you have not tried. Nothing has happened. There is no event.

What there is, is a small wobble in the kitchen in about February, and a moment on the path in the spring, and after each one a rearrangement that nobody noticed including, at the time, you.

And the rearrangements add up.

You do not go into the back room much now. You stopped going upstairs unless there is a reason. You take the long way round the car rather than the gap between the car and the wall, because the gap requires you to turn.

Your world has been quietly contracting for a year, room by room, and nobody has been able to see it happening because each individual decision was completely sensible.

And there is a specific fear underneath it that I am going to say out loud, because you have not.

It is not the falling. It is that a fall would be the beginning of the end of living in this house, and everybody would be kind about it, and it would happen quite quickly.

Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down

There is a line in Psalm thirty seven that says something more useful than most of the encouragement anybody offers about this.

Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand. (Psalm 37:24, King James Version)

Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down, for the LORD upholds him with his hand.

Notice what the verse does not say. It does not say he will not fall.

You have a verse that goes past the falling instead of promising to prevent it, and Psalm 37:24 has never once offered anybody a guarantee against the thing itself. The word is though he fall, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present on the other side of a thing that has not been ruled out.

You are able to see why that is more useful to you than a promise would be.

A promise that nobody falls would be a promise nobody can keep, and it would be recognized instantly, and it would join the pile of kind sentences that people say and that have stopped being audible.

What this verse does instead is deal with the actual fear, which is not the fall. It is what the fall would mean.

Not utterly cast down. The word carries the sense of being thrown down and left there. And the reason given is entirely outside the person: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand.

The holding is not being done by the one who is unsteady.

You are able to be held by somebody whose hand is not unsteady, and Psalm 37:24 has never once put the upholding in the hands of the person doing the standing. The Spirit of God is the one who upholds, and the verse names the falling and goes straight past it to what happens after.

Holding on is not the beginning of anything

Here is the correction, and it is about one word.

You have decided that holding on to things is a stage. It is not a stage. It is a technique.

You have made a piece of equipment into a symbol, and Psalm 37:24 has never once made the manner of somebody's standing the measure of them. It is written that the LORD upholdeth him with his hand, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman that a rail is a rail.

Watch how you go up the stairs. You go up them without holding, when nobody is there, and you have a whole small private argument with yourself about the banister.

Because using it means something. It means the next thing. It means the conversation, eventually, about whether this house is sensible.

And so the most dangerous available version of every movement in this house is being done, night after night, in order to avoid a symbol.

That is the actual danger in this article and it is worth naming plainly. It is not your balance. It is that you are refusing the thing that would steady you because of what you think it says about you.

You are able to hold on to something and have it mean nothing at all, and using a rail has never once been the first step in anything. The Spirit of God is the one who upholds with His own hand, and Psalm 37:24 puts the not being cast down entirely outside the strength of the person.

Two minutes, holding the chair, with somebody

So here is the assignment, and it is designed so that holding on is built in rather than admitted.

Hold the back of a chair with one hand and move for two minutes, with somebody in the room doing it too.

You are able to do this holding on from the start, and holding on from the start has never once been the same as giving in to something. It is written though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a kitchen with two women and two chairs.

The chair is not a concession made for you. It is part of the exercise, the same way a chair is part of it for anybody your age anywhere in the world, and the whole point is that it is designed in rather than resorted to.

One hand on the back of a kitchen chair. Then move. Lift one foot slightly. Shift from one foot to the other. Turn a little and come back. Two minutes.

And with somebody in the room doing it too, which is the piece that does the real work.

Ask your daughter to stand at the other chair and do the same thing at the same time. Not to watch you. To do it.

The moment there are two people holding two chairs, the chair is not about your balance any more. It is what the two of you are doing, and that changes something in the room that no reassurance has ever changed.

You have somebody who would stand at the other chair and do it with you, and asking her has never once been the same as being supervised. Psalm 37:24 has the LORD upholding with His own hand, and the Spirit of God is the one in that kitchen with both of you.

Two minutes. Most days. And then go into the back room for something.