The Second Time In One Month

The first time, Marisol was excellent.

It stopped on a Thursday morning and she had the hazards on inside four seconds and a shop on the phone inside two minutes. She rearranged her whole day standing on the shoulder. She got her son collected by her cousin, moved a meeting, ate lunch at three, and made a joke about it that evening that genuinely made people laugh.

It cost money she did not have spare and she handled that too.

Nineteen days later it stopped again.

Different thing entirely, and a smaller one, and it happened two streets from her house at four in the afternoon on a dry day with a full phone battery and nobody in the car with her.

And Marisol sat in the driver's seat with her hands in her lap and cried for about eleven minutes, and then could not make herself get out.

That is what she has not been able to explain to anybody, including herself, and it has been three weeks.

The first one was worse in every measurable way. Highway. Morning. A child to collect. More money. And she was, by any account, magnificent.

The second one was two streets from home and she came apart.

And what she has decided that means, in the quiet way a person decides things about themselves at two in the morning, is that the first one was a performance and the second one was the truth, and that the truth is she cannot cope.

Her cousin said on the phone, "You did great last time though."

And Marisol said, "That's the problem."

Why the smaller one was the heavier one

Let me put down what I am not doing, so nothing has to brace.

I am not going to tell you the eleven minutes were nothing. They frightened you and they are the reason you are reading this.

And I am not going to guess at what went wrong either time. Two different things went wrong and both belong to somebody qualified, and I would not know.

One plain thing first. Two of these inside a month, and three weeks of two in the mornings afterward, can take a person somewhere considerably darker than a hard patch. If there are thoughts in it about not being here, say so to somebody today: your cousin, a friend, a doctor, or the 988 crisis line for anyone in the United States. That is not a detour from this message. It is the most important line in it.

What I want to explain is the arithmetic, because it is not mysterious and it is not about character.

The first breakdown did not cost you nothing. It cost you an enormous amount, and you paid it out of a reserve, and you paid it so competently that nobody, including you, noticed the withdrawal.

You have a strength that gets renewed rather than one that has to last, and Scripture puts the renewing on God's side of it. Isaiah 40 says they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength, which describes a supply coming in rather than a store being rationed, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that a fact about a reserve that ran out nineteen days after a Thursday.

Rearranging a day on a shoulder is expensive. Being the calm one on the phone is expensive. Being funny about it that evening is one of the most expensive things a person can do, because it requires holding the whole event at arm's length while performing ease with it.

You did all of that in one Thursday and then went back to work.

Nineteen days is not long enough to refill what that took. So the second car, the small one, the dry afternoon two streets from home, did not land on the woman who handled the first one. It landed on what was left of her.

That is not weakness arriving. That is a reserve running out, which is a thing that happens to reserves.

Now here is the verse, and I want you to notice what David does not ask for.

From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I.Psalm 61:2

He does not ask to stop being overwhelmed. He does not ask for a stronger heart, or a better attitude, or for the circumstance to be smaller.

He says when my heart is overwhelmed, as a plain condition, the way a person says when it rains.

And then he asks to be led somewhere.

You are not looking at evidence about your character, and Scripture has a man name his own overwhelmed heart out loud without one word of apology for it. It is written in Psalm 61 that he cries out when his heart is overwhelmed, which puts the overwhelm in the sentence as a circumstance rather than a fault, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a fact about eleven minutes in a parked car.

You have had a reserve spent rather than a self revealed. Psalm 61 has the crying start at the end of the earth, which is the psalmist naming how far out he already was before he said anything, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that distance an honest report rather than a confession.

The rock is higher on purpose

Here is the phrase I want to put in your hands, because it is the one doing the work.

The rock that is higher than I.

Not a rock. Not a good rock. A rock that is higher than the person asking, which means it is a rock he cannot get onto by himself. That is the whole point of the height. He is not asking for a step. He is asking to be led up something out of his own reach.

Now, consider what these three weeks have gone in.

Trying to get back to the Thursday. To be the woman on the shoulder with the hazards on inside four seconds. Treating that woman as the real self, and the one crying in a parked car as a failure to be her.

But the woman on the shoulder was running on a reserve. She was not standing on anything higher than herself. She was standing on herself, and it worked, once, for a Thursday.

What David asks for is a different footing altogether, and he asks for it precisely at the point where his own footing has gone.

That rock is no further off than it was on the Thursday. It is considerably nearer, because on the Thursday there was no need of it and this month the need is known.

You were never asked to climb this yourself, and no verse anywhere makes competence the condition of being led. Psalm 61 asks to be led to a rock deliberately described as higher than the one asking, and the Spirit of God is what makes being led up something the honorable form of getting there.

And I want to say the thing about the eleven minutes, because I think you have them filed wrong.

You cried and then you could not get out of the car.

That is a body that had been running on nothing for nineteen days finally telling the truth in the safest place available, which was two streets from home, in daylight, with a full battery and nobody watching.

Your system waited until it was safe. That is not a collapse. That is timing.

You have a body that held on until the safest possible moment, and Scripture puts the cry at the end of the earth rather than at the beginning of the trouble. It is written that he cries from the end of the earth when his heart is overwhelmed, which is Psalm 61 recording a person who had gone a very long way before saying anything, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that recognizable rather than shameful.