Standing in the Hallway

The bathroom door opens and she comes out and does not look at you, and she does not look at you in the particular way that means it is that morning again.

She goes past to the kitchen. The kettle goes on. You hear the tap, the click, the cupboard, all of it in order, all of it in the same sequence as any other Tuesday, and that is somehow the worst part, because the sequence is fine and nothing else is.

You are still in the hallway.

You have been in this hallway before. You have tried the arm around the shoulder, and there was a month when that was right and a month when it made her go stiff. You have tried saying something hopeful, and you watched it land on her like weight. You have tried saying nothing, and later that evening she said, in a voice with no accusation in it at all, that she had felt alone in the kitchen.

So now you stand in the hallway and run through the options and find that every one of them has been wrong at least once, and while you are running through them the moment goes past, and you go to work.

You are not a man who cannot cope. You are a man who has run out of moves.

The shortest instruction in the letter

Paul is in the middle of a long list of practical things when he drops a line so short it is easy to read past.

Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.Romans 12:15

Notice what he does not include. He does not say explain to them that weep. He does not say fix them, or encourage them, or give them the right verse, or find the thing that will make this better.

Weep with them. The instruction is a location, not a technique. It tells you where to be and says nothing about what to produce.

That is a strange relief for a man who has spent eleven months trying to produce something. You are not failing her by having no words. I am not offering you my own reassurance; the word says weep with them that weep, Romans 12:15, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a wordless man in a hallway into a presence rather than an absence.

She has not been waiting for you to say the right thing. There is no right thing. There is you, in the kitchen, with the kettle.

The trap the hallway sets

Here is what has actually been happening in those forty seconds, and it is worth naming because it will keep happening otherwise.

You do not walk into the kitchen because you are running a risk assessment. Which approach failed last time. What might make it worse. Whether she wants the arm or wants the space. And the assessment is honest and it comes from love, and it takes about forty seconds, and by the end of it the moment has moved and you are putting your shoes on.

The assessment is not the problem. The problem is that it happens in the hallway instead of the kitchen. Scripture puts the comfort in a body that came near, 2 Corinthians 1:4, and the Holy Spirit is called the Comforter because comfort is a presence and not a phrase.

Presence is not a strategy you get right before you arrive. It is the arriving. You have already got the only thing this morning needs, and it is your body in the room. Scripture says God is near unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and the Holy Spirit is the one who teaches a husband that nearness is the ministry and not the preparation for it.

What I am not going to say

I want to be very clear with you about several things, because you may have been handed them elsewhere.

Nobody knows why. Not you, not her, not the friend who meant well. There is no cause here to find, and there is nothing either of you did, and there is no amount of faith that has been measured and found short. Anyone who has implied otherwise was speaking outside their authority and outside Scripture.

I am not going to promise you a child. Not on this page, not in a song, not in a declaration. That promise is not mine to make and making it would be a cruelty dressed as encouragement.

And the care she is receiving is good care. Kindness and medicine are not on opposite sides here, and nothing on this page asks either of you to step back from anything or anyone helping you.

You have not been placed under a test. The word says the Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble, and He knows them that trust in Him, Nahum 1:7, and the Holy Spirit does not run examinations on a couple in a kitchen on a Tuesday morning.

Two people, one waiting, two different rooms

She is not silent because you have failed. She is silent because there is nothing to report, and reporting has become the shape of the last eleven months, and this morning she has nothing to file. Scripture keeps a record of tears in a bottle, Psalm 56:8, and the Holy Spirit does not require a household to have news before He is willing to be in it.

And you are not fine. That is the other half of this and almost nobody asks about it.

You have carried the practical steadiness, the appointments in the diary, the being all right so that somebody is. You have not said out loud, to anyone, that you wanted this too and that you are also tired. The hallway is not only tactical caution. Some of it is a man who does not think his own version of this is allowed to take up any room.

It is allowed. You are also the one waiting, and God is not attending to one of you and overlooking the other. Scripture says He shall gather the lambs with His arm, and gently lead those that are with young, Isaiah 40:11, and the Holy Spirit does not carry the wife of a house and leave the husband standing in the corridor.