One Bad Hour Ate The Whole Week

There was one hour in that week and it has eaten the other hundred and sixty seven.

You know the hour. Everybody in this family knows the hour. It has become a reference, a shorthand, the thing somebody says when they want to be funny about that trip, and every time it is mentioned something in you goes tight.

And here is what is true and what nobody has noticed: there were six good days in that week.

Six. Some of them very good. There was the morning that was genuinely lovely. There was the evening everybody stayed up. There was the entire third day, which had nothing wrong with it at all and which not one person in this house has mentioned since.

But the hour is what got the name. And a thing with a name beats six days without one, every time, because a name is portable and a good Wednesday is not.

That is the whole subject of this article. Not the hour. The naming, and the fact that this family now has an official version of a week that is not accurate.

Forgetting those things which are behind

There is a sentence of Paul's about what he does with the past, and the verb in it is stronger than people expect.

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before. (Philippians 3:13, King James Version)

You have a practice in the written word rather than a feeling, and no week of yours has ever once been beyond the thing that verse describes doing. Philippians 3:13 has forgetting as an activity somebody performs rather than a state that arrives, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that available to a woman at a table where a story keeps getting told.

Look at how he frames it. This one thing I do. It is an action, chosen, ongoing, and it is the one thing he singles out of everything he does.

Forgetting, in that sentence, is not amnesia. Nobody can decide not to remember. It is closer to declining to reckon with something any further. Taking it off the active list.

You are able to decline to keep reckoning with an hour, and doing that has never once been you pretending it did not happen. It is written that the forgetting is one thing I do, a deliberate practice rather than a change of feeling, which is why nothing here asks you to feel differently, and the Spirit of God is what makes it possible to stop counting a thing.

And notice the second half, because the forgetting is not the whole instruction. Reaching forth unto those things which are before. The hands go somewhere else.

That is the mechanism. You do not stop holding a thing by trying to stop holding it. You stop holding it by picking something else up.

You are able to put your hands on something else, and reaching for it has never once required the other thing to be resolved first. The Holy Spirit is the one who puts a new thing into a person's hands, and Philippians 3 pairs the forgetting with a reaching in the same sentence.

A name beats six days

Now the practical part, and it is about how families decide what happened.

A week does not have an official version until somebody names one. And in your family, the hour got named, probably within a day, probably as a joke by whoever is funniest, and it has been the name of that week ever since.

Nothing else in that week has a name. The third day, which was completely good, is not called anything. So it does not get told.

You are able to put a name on something good from that week, and naming it has never once been you rewriting what happened. The Spirit of God is what gives a household a second name for a week, and it is written that the reaching forth is toward the things which are before rather than away from what is behind.

And here is why the naming does the work rather than the correcting. If you argue with the story, you lose. If somebody says remember the hour and you say yes but there were six good days, everybody hears a defense, and a defense makes the hour more important rather than less.

You cannot delete a name. You can add one.

You are able to add rather than argue, and adding one has never once been a smaller move than correcting anybody. It is written that this one thing I do is a practice rather than a rebuttal, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a household starts telling a second story about the same week.

And there is one thing to be honest about, which is that the hour was genuinely bad. This article is not asking you to pretend otherwise, and the tightness you feel when it comes up is not something you have to talk yourself out of.

You are able to feel that tightness and still hand this family the other six days, and the feeling has never once had to change first. The Spirit of God is with a woman who acts before she feels better, and Philippians 3:13 makes the forgetting a thing done rather than a thing waited for.

Two good things, out loud, at the table

So here is the assignment.

Name two good things from that week out loud at the table. And do not mention the hour.

Two, not one, because one sounds like an exception and two sounds like a pattern. And out loud at a table, with people eating, rather than in a conversation about the trip, because a conversation about the trip is the hour's home ground.

You are able to say two ordinary sentences at a dinner table, and doing it there has never once been a smaller thing than a proper conversation. Philippians 3:13 has the reaching forth as the paired action, and the Spirit of God is with a woman putting a dish down and saying something in the middle of everybody talking.

Make them specific and small. Not it was a good week. Say: I keep thinking about that morning by the water when nobody wanted to leave. And then, separately, in the same meal: also the night everybody stayed up and we could not stop laughing about the light switch.

And then do not mention the hour. Not to contrast it, not to concede it, not even to say and I know the other thing happened. Mentioning it hands it the floor.

You are able to leave it out entirely, and saying nothing about it has never once been the same thing as denying it. It is written that the forgetting and the reaching happen together, and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds a woman's tongue off a subject that has had enough attention.

Then do it again the following week, with two different things. Three or four times is enough. Families are not persuaded, they are furnished, and what they tell later is whatever is lying around.