Ten Stayed And I Counted One

Eleven people. Ten of them are still here. You have spent a week on the other one.

You could not have told me that this morning, because nobody counts the ones who stay. There is no feeling attached to a person who simply carries on, which is exactly why they are invisible.

So here is the arithmetic, said out loud: one person left and ten people did not, and the ten include the woman who has been with you since the second year and the man who recommends you to everybody he meets and the family who book the same week every year without being reminded.

And you have thought about none of them since Monday.

I am not going to tell you to focus on the positive, which is a phrase from a poster. I am going to ask you to write some names down, and I am going to tell you why Scripture asks for exactly that.

Forget not all his benefits

There is a line in the psalms where David speaks to himself, and the instruction he gives himself is about memory.

It is not an instruction to feel better. It is an instruction to not forget, which is a different thing and a much more practical one.

Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. (Psalm 103:2, King James Version)

You are able to remember on purpose, and remembering has never once been the same as pretending. Psalm 103:2 treats forgetting as the default and remembering as the deliberate act, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to a kitchen table with a notebook and a pen on it.

Notice he has to tell himself. This is a man giving his own soul an instruction, which means it does not happen on its own, and he knew that about himself.

And notice what he says not to forget. The benefits. The things that are there. Not a feeling about them, the actual items, which implies they can be listed.

You have a list of benefits available, and they have never once been automatic to see. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a man talking to his own soul reach a woman with a mug going cold beside a notebook, and Psalm 103:2 treats the remembering as something a person has to do on purpose.

Why the ten are invisible

Let me say why you cannot see the ten, because it is not ingratitude.

A person who leaves makes a noise. There is a message, or a gap where a booking was, and the noise makes an event. A person who stays makes no noise at all. They book, they pay, they say thanks, and nothing in your mind marks it, because nothing happened.

You were attending to the noise, and the quiet has never once meant there was nothing there. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman what her own attention naturally does, and the written word has a man ordering himself not to forget the benefits in Psalm 103:2.

And so your picture of the week is made entirely of events, and the only event this week was a loss. That is not a distortion you chose, it is how attention works, and it is why the psalm has to be an instruction.

Ten people trusted you with something this month. None of them made an event out of it.

You are held up by ten people this month, and not one of them has ever once made a noise about it. His Spirit is the one who makes a woman able to see what has been steady, and Psalm 103:2 commands the remembering because nobody does it by accident.

Write the names

So here is the exercise, and it is names and not feelings.

Write them down. Actual names, on paper, in a list. The ten, or however many there are. First names are fine.

You are able to write ten names, and writing them has never once been a way of avoiding the loss. Psalm 103:2 asks for the benefits to be held in mind rather than felt about, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a plain list possible for a woman who has spent a week on a single absence.

Do not write anything next to them. No notes about how much they spend, no thoughts about whether they might go too. Names only.

Then read the list once, out loud, and leave it on the table. The point is not to cheer yourself up. The point is that ten names written in your own handwriting are harder to overlook than ten people who simply carried on.

You were never abandoned this month, and the arithmetic has never once said otherwise. The Spirit of God carries a woman's attention to what has been steady, and the written word puts the remembering of benefits in the imperative in Psalm 103:2.