We Got Back And Everything Felt Flat

You were different with each other out there, and it was gone inside four days of being home.

That is the actual subject of this article and I am not going to soften it, because the softening is what makes most writing about this useless.

Something was true between you while you were away. You were slower with each other. Somebody said something at a table on the third evening that would not have been said in your kitchen. Two of them got on for six days in a way they have not for a year. And you noticed it happening and thought, without saying it to anybody, that this is what we are actually like.

And then you got home, and it took about four days.

Nobody did anything wrong. There was no argument. It just came back: the rooms, the times, the volume, the way everybody moves past each other on the stairs. And by about Thursday it was as though the week had happened to different people.

And what that produces, and this is the part nobody names, is a specific kind of grief with guilt in it. Because you cannot say you are sad, because you have just had a week away, and who is going to hear that.

What mean these stones

There is a moment in Joshua where a people who have just come through something are told to do one specific practical thing about it, and the reason given is worth the whole article.

That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones? (Joshua 4:6, King James Version)

You have an instruction in the written word to bring one thing out of a crossing, and no flat week afterward has ever once been able to take it out of a household. Joshua 4:6 has stones carried up out of the riverbed rather than the crossing being remembered, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that specific to a family four days back from somewhere.

Look at what they were told to do. Not remember it. Not talk about how good it was. Carry twelve stones out, physically, and put them down where you live.

That is a strange instruction and it is a practical one. Something had to come out of the river and be set up on the other side, in ordinary ground, in the place they were going to live afterward.

You are able to bring something physical out of that week, and no amount of the feeling fading has once been able to reach a thing you actually carried. It is written that the stones were taken out of the Jordan and set up in the place where they lodged, which is a transfer rather than a memory, and the Spirit of God is what turns a good week into an object in a kitchen.

And notice the reason given for it. When your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, what mean these stones.

The stones exist to be asked about. Which means the whole design is that the thing survives into the ordinary years, and gets noticed there, by children who were not paying attention at the time.

You are able to put something into the ordinary weeks that gets asked about later, and no version of that has once required anybody to remember how the week felt. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a small carried thing into a question a child asks in ten years, and Joshua 4 puts the stones in the place where the people were going to live.

The feeling was never going to survive

Now the practical part, and I have to say the hard half first because otherwise the second half is a lie.

The feeling was never going to survive. It was not going to, it did not, and it will not next time either.

That is not a failure of anybody in your family. The way you were with each other out there was produced by conditions: no work, no school, nowhere to be, different rooms, and nobody able to leave. Take those away and the effect goes, because the effect was downstream of them.

You are not a family who lost something, and four days of it fading has never once been evidence that any of it was fake. The Spirit of God is what separates a condition from a character in a household, and it is written that the stones had to be carried out because the crossing itself was not going to stay.

So stop trying to keep the feeling. That is the actual instruction, and it is a relief rather than a loss, because trying to keep it is what has made every homecoming a slow disappointment.

You are able to stop trying to keep the feeling, and letting it go has never once meant giving up on what was true out there. It is written that a physical thing was carried out of the water, and the Holy Spirit is the one who redirects a household from holding a mood to carrying an object.

And here is the exchange, which is the whole point of the row. You cannot bring the week home. You can bring one thing out of it.

One specific practical thing you did there. Not the atmosphere. A thing with a shape: eating outside, the walk after dinner, the game somebody taught somebody, no phones at the table, the thing you did at bedtime that nobody does here.

You are able to carry one specific thing through your own front door, and it has never once needed to be large to be a stone out of the river. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a household does one imported thing in an ordinary kitchen, and Joshua 4:6 has the stones set up in the place where they lodged rather than at the water.

One thing, this week, at home

So here is the assignment.

Do one thing from the trip at home this week, however small.

Pick it from what actually happened rather than from what would be good for you. Something you all did out there without deciding to. And pick the smallest one, because the smallest one is the one that survives a Tuesday.

You are able to choose the smallest thing rather than the best one, and its size has never once decided whether it lasts. Joshua 4:6 has ordinary stones out of a riverbed rather than anything valuable, and the Spirit of God is with a family doing something slightly out of place in their own house.

Then do it, once, this week, without announcing what it is for. Do not say we are going to try to keep some of the holiday going, because that turns it into a project and everybody can feel a project.

Just do the thing. Eat outside. Take the walk. Put the game on the table.

You are able to do it without explaining it, and doing it quietly has never once made it a smaller thing than it is. It is written that the stones were set up to be asked about later rather than explained at the time, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a thing sit in a house until somebody notices it.

And expect it to feel slightly ridiculous in your own kitchen, because it will. The thing was normal there and it is odd here. Do it anyway, once. Odd is what a stone in a field looks like.