The Week She Stopped Telling People

Yolanda told two people and then she stopped.

The first was her cousin, and her cousin said, "Ooh, girl," in a way that meant she was going to enjoy this, and then asked four questions Yolanda did not want to answer.

The second was a woman at church who she had thought would be steady about it, and the woman's face did a thing. Not unkind. It went careful. And she said, "Have you been sleeping okay, baby?" and put a hand on her arm, and Yolanda understood, in that half-second, exactly what she had just been categorized as.

That was in March. She has told nobody since.

I am not going to describe the week that made her tell anybody. I want to be plain about why. I was not in that apartment. Nobody who writes anything on the internet was in that apartment. And the most reliable way for a woman in Yolanda's position to be harmed is a stranger deciding, at a distance and with great confidence, what was in her room.

So: she had a week where her own bedroom did not feel like her bedroom, and she told two people, and after the second one she stopped.

She is fifty-two. She works in billing at a hospital. She has raised three children and buried a husband and she has never in her life been thought of as somebody who needs handling.

Here is what has happened since March, and this is the part that matters.

She has been fine. Mostly. The week passed and did not come back in the same way. But something else did not pass, which is that she now watches her own face when people ask how she is, and she has stopped going to the Tuesday group, and when her daughter said in June that she seemed quiet, Yolanda heard herself produce an answer that was smooth and had been ready for some time.

Here is the day it caught.

A woman she barely knows, at the coffee urn, said, "You used to come Tuesdays."

And Yolanda said, "Life's busy."

And the woman said, "Mm," in a way that meant she did not believe it and was not going to push, and then said something else about her grandchildren, and left it.

You know this. You told somebody, and their face did something, and you filed the whole thing away and started managing how you appear, and the managing has taken more out of you than the original week did.

Three words, and all of them positive

Let me be exact about what I am not doing here, because this is the article where being careless would do real damage.

I am not going to tell you what happened in your room. I am not going to name anything and I am not going to describe anything. I am not going to teach you a technique, a prayer to walk the apartment with, a thing to do at a doorway, or any procedure at all. There is a great deal of that available and I am not adding to it, and I would ask you to be careful of anybody who hands you a method for a night they were not present at.

And I am not going to leave you more afraid than you felt when this page opened. If you finish it warier of your own bedroom, I have failed at the only thing this article is for.

What I am going to do is read you one verse and count what is actually in it.

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.2 Timothy 1:7

Now, that verse gets quoted for its first half, and the first half is the smaller half.

Look at the sentence structure. There is one negative clause, short, and then three positives, listed. Power. Love. A sound mind. Paul spends one clause on what was not given and three on what was, and the three are the point.

You have been given three things, and one of them is specifically a mind that works properly. 2 Timothy 1:7 lists a sound mind as a gift alongside power and love, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries that off the page and into a hall beside a coffee urn.

And that third gift is the one that matters for a woman who saw a face go careful.

A sound mind. The word carries the sense of soundness, self-possession, a mind that is in its right working order. Paul puts it in the same breath as power and love, as a given thing, as part of the standard equipment of somebody who belongs to God.

You are equipped with a sound mind as a matter of gift rather than as something to be proved to anybody, and the verse states it flatly. It is written that God has given power and love and a sound mind, and the Holy Spirit is what makes an ancient inventory a present possession.

What the second face actually cost

Now here is the part I most want to reach, and it is not about March.

What Yolanda lost in that half-second was not a friend. The woman at church is a decent person who reacted the way a great many decent people react. What Yolanda lost was her sense of being an ordinary reliable adult in the eyes of somebody whose opinion she had not thought to worry about.

And what she has done since is start managing her own appearance, full time, in every room, which is exhausting in a way that the original week was not.

You are not required to defend your own soundness, and Scripture hands it over as a gift rather than as a verdict anybody else gets to reach. 2 Timothy 1:7 puts the sound mind on the list of what God gave, and the Holy Spirit is what keeps another person's face from being allowed to overrule it.

Now I want to say something about the doctor, and I want to say it carefully, because the woman at church said something similar and it landed as a category and not as care.

Here is the difference. She asked you whether you had been sleeping because she was working out what was wrong with you. I am telling you to see a doctor because a person waking suddenly, frightened, unable to move or speak, is describing something with ordinary medical explanations that are common, well understood, and treatable, and because a bad week of sleep can produce a great deal on its own, and because you deserve a professional in the room rather than an internet full of strangers.

That is not a category. That is care, and you are the one who decides what to do with it.

You are able to receive an ordinary medical answer without it saying anything at all about your standing with God, and Scripture never once puts those in competition. Colossians 4:14 has Paul calling Luke the beloved physician as a straightforward compliment, and the Holy Spirit is what keeps the care of a body from being read as a lack of faith.

And say the rest here too, because I would rather say it and not be needed. If the months since March have taken you somewhere darker than watchful, tell somebody this week: your daughter, your doctor, a counselor, or the 988 crisis line if you live in the United States. That is me refusing to leave you standing at that urn on your own.