I Do Not Feel Any Of It Any More

It is not that anything hurts. That is the part you cannot explain to anybody.

If there were pain there would be something to point at. What there is instead is a flatness where something used to be, and you noticed it properly about a year ago, and since then you have been quietly running a diagnostic on yourself that never returns a result.

And nobody has done anything. That is the other part. There is no event, no betrayal, no cruelty. There is a person you have known for a very long time, and a quiet, and a question underneath it that you have not said out loud to one human being.

Four things I am not going to do, and I want them all on the table before we go anywhere.

I am not going to promise you the feeling comes back. I do not know. People will tell you it does, and sometimes it does, and saying so as a guarantee is not a thing anybody has the standing to do.

I am not going to tell you the feeling does not matter. It matters. It is not everything and it is not nothing, and being told it is nothing by somebody who feels theirs is unbearable.

I am not going to suggest that the absence is a sin or a failure. It is not. Nobody chooses this and nobody generates it back by trying harder.

And I am not going to say one word about leaving, in either direction. Not a hint of it. That is not what this article is for and it is not mine.

God is the strength of my heart

There is a line in Psalm 73 written by a man who had been through something that emptied him out, and the structure of it is the useful part.

My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. (Psalm 73:26, King James Version)

My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart.

Read what that admits. His heart is failing. Not was, not might. He says it plainly and he does not soften it and he does not treat it as a fault to be repented of.

And then the but, which does not reverse the first half. It does not say but then it came back. It says that while his heart is failing, its strength is somewhere other than in itself.

That is a very specific offer. It is not the restoration of the feeling. It is a place for the weight to sit while the feeling is not there.

Psalm 73:26 admits the failing and puts the strength outside it rather than repairing it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that reach somebody in a quiet year.

You are held while your own heart is quiet, and the strength of it has never once had to come from inside it. Psalm 73:26 says my flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a place to stand rather than a promise about how you will feel.

The promise is not the feeling

Now the distinction that does the work, and it is not a cold one, although it can be said coldly.

What you promised was not a feeling. Nobody can promise a feeling, because nobody can produce one on demand, and a vow to feel something would be an undertaking no human being could keep for a week.

What was promised was presence. Staying. What you would do. Those are all things a person can actually deliver in a year when the feeling is not available.

Psalm 73:26 has a man whose heart is failing still speaking of God as his portion, and the Holy Spirit is not asking anybody to manufacture warmth to prove something.

This is not a demotion of the feeling. I said above that it matters and I meant it. It is that the thing holding your marriage up this year is not currently the feeling, and it was never the only thing holding it up, and that is not a tragedy.

You are keeping something you can actually keep, and the promise has never once been a promise to feel. The written word has a man call God his portion while his own heart is failing, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates a promise from a feeling without belittling either.

Say it, then do one ordinary thing

So here is the assignment, and it is two small things.

Say out loud that the promise is not the feeling. Alone. Once. In plain words: what I promised was to be here, and I am here, and the feeling being quiet is not the promise breaking.

Then do one ordinary thing for them.

Ordinary. Not romantic and not significant. Fill the car. Do the thing they were going to have to do on Saturday. Bring them something they like without a conversation attached.

Small enough that they do not ask what it is about. If they ask what it is about, it was too big.

And do not check yourself afterwards to see whether it produced anything. That is the diagnostic running again, and the diagnostic is a large part of what makes the quiet feel like a verdict.

Psalm 73:26 has a man stating where his strength is while nothing in him has improved, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in an ordinary thing done in a flat year.

You are able to act inside the quiet, and it has never once required a feeling to be there first. Psalm 73:26 puts the strength outside a failing heart, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with somebody filling a car on an ordinary Thursday.