It Is The Getting There I Dread

You want to be there. That has never been the question.

What you dread, with a specific physical dread that arrives about a week beforehand, is the getting there.

Three hours. Everybody at close range. The one who feels sick and does not say so until it is too late. The one who asks how long is left every eleven minutes. The one who has taken up more than a seat and will not be told. The moment somewhere around the second hour where your own patience goes and you hear a voice come out of you that you do not like.

And by the time you arrive you are not a person on a trip. You are somebody who has just got through something, and everybody has to unpack and be pleasant, and there is a version of the first evening that never happens because of how you all came in.

So you find reasons not to go. And the reasons you find are honest ones, money mostly, and they are not the reason.

Nobody ever writes about this part, because it is not a nice subject and it does not photograph. So let me write about it, plainly, with no suggestion anywhere in it that you should be handling it better.

And there arose a great storm of wind

There is an account in Mark about a journey, and the journey is the whole point of it, which is why I want it here.

The disciples are crossing water. They are not arriving anywhere yet. And this happens.

And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full. And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish? (Mark 4:37, King James Version)

Two things in there, and both of them are for you.

You have in front of you a whole passage given over to a crossing, and no journey has ever once been the dull part Scripture skips to reach the arriving. Mark 4:37 spends its words on the middle of the water rather than on the far shore, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that mean something to a woman who has been counting those hours as a toll.

The first is that the crossing was genuinely bad. This is not a story about people who overreacted. The ship was filling with water. These were fishermen, and fishermen do not panic at weather they have seen before.

The dread was proportionate. Nobody in that boat is corrected for being frightened.

You are not exaggerating the journey, and no part of your dread has ever once been you making more of it than it is. Mark 4:37 has the ship actually filling with water rather than the men imagining it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman's fear be accurate without also being a failure.

The second thing is where He was. In the boat. Not waiting on the far shore for them to get through the crossing on their own and arrive.

That distinction is the entire article. Because you have been treating the journey as the toll you pay before the part where anything good is available. Three hours of nothing but endurance, and then the trip begins.

You have not been traveling alone in the worst hour of it, and no part of that journey has ever once been outside where He actually is. It is written that He was in the hinder part of the ship in the middle of the storm, which is why the crossing is not a gap in His attention, and the Spirit of God is what makes that specific to the second hour of a drive.

And they woke Him. They said, carest thou not. Which is not a polite prayer. It is an accusation, from frightened people, and it is recorded without a word of criticism attached to it.

You are allowed to say the ungracious version out loud, and speaking to God in the middle of it has never once required you to be composed first. The Holy Spirit is the one who receives a sentence like that as prayer, and Mark 4 keeps the accusation in the text rather than cleaning it up.

Name the part, not the whole thing

Now the practical part, and it turns on one small piece of precision.

The dread attaches itself to the journey. But the journey is three hours and most of it is fine. What gets dreaded is one part of it, and I would guess the part has never been separated from the whole.

You are dreading something smaller than you think, and no year of carrying it as three whole hours has ever once made it that big. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a shapeless dread apart into pieces a person can actually hold, and Mark 4 has one crossing named rather than the whole of the water.

For most people it is one of about four things. It is the last forty minutes, when everybody has run out. It is the middle, where the novelty has gone and there is nothing to look at. It is the sickness. Or it is the specific moment when two of them start on each other in a space with no doors.

That is a much smaller problem than the journey. And it is the only problem that can actually be worked on, because you cannot do anything about three hours in general.

You are able to work on forty minutes instead of three hours, and naming the exact part has never once been you making excuses about the rest of it. The Spirit of God is the one who narrows a thing down until it is the size of an actual step, and it is written that the storm was one crossing rather than the whole sea.

And then one change. Not a system. One.

If it is the last forty minutes, then the stop happens before anybody has run out, rather than at the point when somebody needs it. If it is the sickness, then the seating changes and nobody has to earn it. If it is the two of them, then they are not next to each other, and that is not a punishment, it is furniture.

You are able to change one thing rather than fix the journey, and one change has never once been too small to make a difference to how you all arrive. Mark 4:37 has a storm dealt with rather than a sea rearranged, and the Holy Spirit is what puts one workable idea into a mother's head after years of dread.

And one more thing, which is about you rather than the arrangements. The journey counts as part of the trip. Not the price of it. Part of it. Some of what your children will remember will happen in that car, and it will not be the pleasant part.

You have already had days that were remembered from inside the difficult hour, and none of that has ever once depended on the hour going well. It is written that the crossing has a whole passage of scripture given to it rather than being skipped to get to the shore, and His Spirit is present in a car in the second hour.

Name it, and change one thing

So here is the assignment.

Name out loud the worst part of the journey, and change one thing about that part only.

Out loud to one other person, because in your head it stays the whole journey and out loud it becomes forty minutes.

Then one change. Write it down. And here is the rule that makes it work: the change goes in before anybody needs it. Not as a response to somebody being difficult, because then it is a reward and everybody learns something you did not intend.

You are planning around what is true rather than around what should be true, and that has never once been the same thing as expecting less of your own children. Mark 4 has Christ in the boat during the storm rather than waiting for calm water, and the Holy Spirit is the one steadying a mother while she says the honest sentence.

And leave the rest of the journey alone. Two hours and twenty minutes of it were never the problem.