I Have Stopped Opening The Mail

The drawer is the one by the front door, the shallow one that was always for keys and batteries.

It started with the one about the furnace, which you opened, and then the follow up, which you did not.

Then there was one from the insurance people with a window in it, and one you are fairly sure is just a statement, and one from the city that might be about the sidewalk and might be about something else.

There are, you think, eleven.

You do not know that it is eleven. You have not counted them, because counting them would mean taking them out and putting them on a surface, and that is already most of the way to opening one.

And here is what has actually happened in this house, which is worse than any of the letters.

The hallway has gone bad.

It is where you come in and where the children drop their bags, and there is a drawer in it, and you have started walking past that drawer in a particular way. There is a small thing your shoulders do. You have noticed it and you have not been able to stop it.

And last Thursday your husband opened that drawer looking for batteries, and neither of you said anything at all.

What is in the drawer and what is in the room

Let me separate two things, because the second one has grown much larger than the first and nobody has pointed at it.

In the drawer there are some letters. Some of them are bills, some of them are almost certainly nothing, and one or two of them may be genuinely difficult. That is a finite set of paper with a finite amount of bad news in it, and it has a ceiling.

In the room there is a dread with no ceiling at all.

The dread contains every possible letter, at the worst possible amount, all arriving at once, and unlike the actual envelopes it has no size, because nothing has been read.

You have been carrying a dread with no ceiling because nothing in that drawer has ever once been given an actual size. It is written in Philippians 4 that we are to be careful for nothing, but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving to let our requests be made known unto God, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been standing in that hallway with you.

And notice the direction it runs, which is the cruel part of it.

The longer they sit there, the worse they become. Not the letters, which are exactly what they were the day they arrived. The dread, which grows because there is nothing to limit it, and because a person who has not opened a letter for six weeks starts to believe something about herself as well.

That is the second layer, and it is the one that took the hallway.

You have been reading a closed drawer as a fact about yourself, and eleven envelopes have never once been qualified to say who lives in this house. It is written in Philippians 4 that the peace of God shall keep your hearts and minds, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing that guard while the paper is still unopened.

You have begun to read a drawer as evidence about the woman who lives here, and a stack of unopened paper has never once been able to say anything about you. Philippians 4 puts the requests and the thanksgiving in the same sentence and does not ask for anything to be solved first, and the Spirit of God is the one who set it up that way.

Be careful for nothing

Here is the passage, and the old wording hides how practical it is.

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6, King James Version)

Be careful for nothing means: do not be full of care, do not be anxious about it.

But look at what comes immediately after, because it is not a command to stop feeling. It is a redirection with a mechanism in it: in every thing, by prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known.

Made known. Which means specified. Named. Stated as an actual request rather than carried as a general weight.

That is the opposite of a drawer.

You have been carrying a general weight instead of a set of named things, and a request that has never been specified has never once been able to be answered. The written word says let your requests be made known unto God rather than let your dread be carried around, and the Holy Spirit is the one who asked for it in that form.

And the promise attached is worth reading carefully, because it is not what people usually take from it.

It does not say the circumstances get sorted. It says the peace of God shall keep your hearts and minds, which is a garrison word: it holds the inside while the outside is still what it is.

Nothing in that verse promises that the letters are fine. It promises a guard on the person who reads them.

You are offered a guard on the inside of you rather than a guarantee about the paper, and no envelope in that drawer has ever once had the power to get past that. Philippians 4 uses a word about a garrison holding a position, and the Spirit of God is the one posted there.