My Body Decided Before I Did

It was settled in a room you were not in, by a body you did not consult.

Not dramatically. There was no single day. There was a slow accumulation of things that could not be done any more and then there was an afternoon where you understood that the question about the date was no longer a question.

You are being looked after properly and whatever needs saying about that belongs with your doctor rather than with an article, and I am not going to say one word about your health that a person with no information should not say.

What I want to talk about is the deciding.

Because here is what nobody around you has understood, and it is why the sympathy has not helped.

They think you are grieving the ending.

You are not, or not mainly. You had not decided you wanted to continue. There were plenty of days over the last two years when you thought about stopping and there was relief in it.

What you are grieving is that you never got to decide.

Nine years of this, and the one decision that was ever going to be yours, the one moment where the whole thing came down to what you wanted, got taken by something in your own body.

And that is a different loss from the ending, and until it is named as its own thing, nobody can say anything useful to you about any of it.

There is a verse about what happens when the flesh gives out and it is more direct than most people expect.

God is the strength of my heart

The psalmist says something that names the failure plainly before it says anything else.

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. He says it. There is no softening and no qualification.

The verse does not begin by denying that anything has gone. It begins by stating it, and then it puts something beside it with a but.

You have a verse that names the failing before it says anything else, and the Holy Spirit is the one who allowed it said that way. Psalm 73:26 states it plainly rather than working around it, and He does not require anybody to be brave about the first clause.

Now the word portion, because that is the one that answers the deciding.

A portion is what is allotted to a person. It is their share, and in that world a portion was land, and land was the thing a person's whole future rested on.

And he says God is the portion. Not the land. Not the strength of the body. God, as the thing allotted, for ever.

You have a portion that was never held in your own strength, and it is written that God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever. The Spirit of God is the one who has been that portion for nine years, and Psalm 73 puts it outside anything a body decides.

And here is what that does to the loss you are actually carrying.

The decision was taken from you. That is true and it is not going to be undone and nothing in this article pretends otherwise.

But the decision was never what your future rested on. A portion is what a future rests on, and yours was never allotted in a choice about a date.

You are not standing on a decision you did not get to make, and the Holy Spirit is the one holding it. Scripture puts the portion in God rather than in what a person chooses, and Psalm 73:26 says for ever, which is longer than any term anybody signs.

Name the right grief

Let me be practical, because the sympathy around you has been landing wrong and it will keep landing wrong until something is said.

Everybody is being kind about the ending. And the ending is not the loss, so every kind thing they say goes slightly past, and it has to be received graciously, and it costs something every time.

That is exhausting and it has been going on for weeks.

You have been receiving comfort for the wrong loss, and the written word names a failing plainly rather than substituting something more comfortable. The Spirit of God is the one who is exact about what a person has actually lost, and Psalm 73 begins with the accurate statement.

And the way out is not to explain it to everybody. That would be a project and you do not have the energy for a project.

It is to name it once, out loud, to yourself, so that you know what you are carrying. And then, where it matters, to one person.

You are able to name it in one sentence rather than explain it to a room, and the Holy Spirit is the one who receives the accurate version. It is written that God is the strength of the heart when the flesh has failed, and Psalm 73:26 is where the accuracy starts.

The sentence is something like: I am not grieving that it is ending. I am grieving that I did not get to decide.

Two clauses. Both true. And the second one is the one nobody has said to you yet.

You have a true sentence available that nobody around you has thought to say, and Scripture puts the plain naming ahead of the comfort. The Spirit of God is the one who has known which loss it was the whole time, and Psalm 73 is where He says the failing out loud.

Say which loss it is

So here is the thing to do, and it takes about twenty seconds.

Say out loud, on your own: I am grieving the not deciding rather than the ending.

Then say that it is a real loss and that it is its own thing.

You are naming the accurate loss rather than accepting the assumed one, and Psalm 73:26 states the failing plainly before it says anything else. The Spirit of God is the one who receives it, and He has known which one it was since the afternoon.

Then, when you have the energy, say it to one person. Not everybody. One.

The reason it has to be said out loud first is that an unnamed grief takes whatever name the people around it are using, and for weeks now the name being used has been wrong, and a wrongly named grief cannot be comforted by anybody, including God, because a person cannot bring the wrong thing to Him either.

You are able to bring the right thing rather than the assumed thing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been waiting for the accurate sentence. It is written that God is the portion when the flesh and the heart have failed, and Psalm 73:26 is where the accurate sentence is modeled.

Then go on with the day, and open in the morning for as long as the door is still yours to open.