I Dread The Coming Home

You have started to dread the going because of what comes after it, and you have not told anybody that.

Here is the shape of it, and it has taken you about three trips to notice.

The week is good. The week is genuinely good, every time. And then somewhere around the last afternoon a weight arrives, and the whole of the drive home has it in it, and then there is the first evening, and the first evening is the worst evening of the month.

The bags. The washing. The food that is not in the house. Somebody being difficult at exactly the point when there is nothing left in you. And the specific flatness of your own kitchen after six days of somewhere else.

And now the dread has moved. It used to arrive on the last afternoon. It arrives now about a week before you go, which means the anticipation of the trip and the dread of the return are happening at the same time, and you have started to have a thought you would not say out loud.

Which is: is this worth it.

Let me take that seriously rather than reassure you, and let me give you a verse with a valley in it.

Passing through the valley of Baca

There is a line in the eighty fourth Psalm about people on a journey and a particular valley, and what it says they do with it is the whole answer.

Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; the rain also filleth the pools. (Psalm 84:6, King James Version)

You have a verse in the written word about people who make something out of a hard stretch rather than avoiding it, and no valley on any journey has ever once been a reason not to travel. Psalm 84:6 has them passing through and making it a well rather than going around, and the Holy Spirit is the one who applies that to a woman standing in a hall with four bags.

Baca means weeping. That is a valley named after crying, on the route to Jerusalem, and it is on the way rather than off to one side.

So the first thing the verse establishes is that the hard stretch is part of the road. Not a mistake, not a sign of a wrong turn. On the route, named, and passed through by people going to the right place.

You are on the route rather than off it, and no first evening has ever once been evidence that the going was a mistake. It is written that they pass through the valley of Baca on the way, which puts the hard stretch inside the journey rather than beside it, and the Spirit of God is what tells a woman in a hall that she is where the road goes.

And then what they do with it. Make it a well. They dig. In the valley named after weeping, on their way somewhere else, they leave water behind them.

That is not enduring it. It is an action taken in the valley itself, which changes the valley for the people coming after.

You are able to do something in the hard stretch rather than only survive it, and no version of that has ever once required the stretch to be easier. The Holy Spirit is the one who puts an action into a person's hands in the middle of the worst evening of the month, and Psalm 84 has a well dug in the valley rather than on the far side of it.

The dread has moved, and that is the actual problem

Now the practical part, and it is about the migration rather than the dread.

The dread itself is proportionate. The first evening back is genuinely one of the hardest evenings a family has, and nobody writes about it, and everybody has it.

The problem is that it has moved forward. It used to sit on the last afternoon, where it belonged, and it now arrives a week before departure and sits on top of the anticipation.

You are not a woman who has stopped wanting to go, and the dread arriving early has never once been the same thing as the wanting stopping. The Spirit of God is what distinguishes a migration from a change of heart, and it is written that the valley is passed through rather than dreaded from a distance.

And here is why it moved, which is worth knowing because it is fixable. An unnamed thing spreads. A thing that has been named stays where it is.

You have never said out loud that the first evening back is the worst evening of the month. So it has no boundaries, and it has been quietly expanding into the week before you go.

You are able to put a boundary around it by naming it, and saying it out loud has never once made it larger. It is written that the valley has a name, which is how a valley stays a valley rather than becoming the whole journey, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a woman says the plain thing about a Sunday evening.

And the second half is the well, which is an actual practical thing. The first evening is hard because it is unplanned, and it is the one evening of the trip nobody plans, and it is the one that most needs it.

Everybody plans the going. Nobody plans the getting back.

You are able to plan the one evening nobody plans, and no trip you have ever taken has once had that hour arranged in it. Psalm 84:6 has the well dug in the valley itself rather than at either end of the road, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in an evening somebody thought about in advance.

Name it, and plan the first evening

So here is the assignment, and it has two halves and they belong together.

Name the coming home out loud before you go next time. And plan one thing for the first evening back.

The naming first, and do it before you leave, to whoever is going with you. Say it plainly: the first night back is always the worst evening of the month, and it is going to be hard again, and that is normal.

You are able to name it in advance rather than meet it unprepared, and saying it beforehand has never once made it worse. Psalm 84:6 has the valley named on the map rather than discovered on the day, and the Spirit of God is with a woman saying an honest sentence in a kitchen before a trip.

Then the well. Plan one thing for that first evening, and make it something that removes work rather than adds an event.

The obvious one is food. Something in the freezer, or decided in advance and bought on the way home, so that nobody has to think at seven o'clock. Or: nothing gets unpacked that night, decided beforehand, so it is a plan rather than a failure.

You are able to dig one well in the worst evening of the month, and it has never once needed to be more than a meal decided in advance. It is written that they made the valley a well as they passed through it, which is one action inside the hard stretch, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in a kitchen on a Sunday evening where somebody planned ahead.

And that is all. Not a better attitude to coming home, which nobody has ever achieved. One named valley and one dug well.

And the answer to the question nobody has said out loud: yes, it is worth it. But an argument was never going to settle that. It gets settled by one first evening that had a plan in it.