He Told Me Not to Worry About It

He said it was nothing. He said it in the way he says things when he does not want a conversation, which is briefly and while doing something else.

So you have been doing this instead.

Every night for about a fortnight, after he has gone up, with the phone at an angle so the light does not come round the door. You have read about the symptom, and then about the symptom in men of his age, and then about the symptom in men of his age who also have the other thing he has and does not really manage.

You have found the reassuring version. You have found the other one.

And there is a particular kind of loneliness in this that nobody talks about, which is that you are frightened about the person you would normally be frightened with.

You cannot say it to him, because he has closed it. You cannot say it to the children. You have not said it to your sister because it feels like discussing him behind his back, which it would be.

So it lives here, at half past eleven, with a phone at an angle.

And the thing you know perfectly well, in the part of your mind that is not at half past eleven, is that no page you find will get him to the doctor. That is not what any of this can do.

What this page will not do

I am not going to tell you what his symptom is. I have not seen him, I am not qualified, and a page that hands a wife a diagnosis for her husband would be putting a weapon in a marriage.

I am not going to tell you how to make him go. You cannot make him go. He is a grown man and his body is his, and nothing on this page and nothing in any song is aimed at moving his will, because that was never ours.

And I am not going to tell you your fear is silly. Something has been going on for a fortnight and you have noticed it and you are the person who knows him best in the world. This rests on Scripture in Psalm 55:22, and on the Holy Spirit who makes what is written a living thing.

But I will say the one thing that is genuinely urgent. If he ever has chest pain, sudden weakness on one side, difficulty speaking, severe breathlessness, or anything that frightens you badly in the moment, ring the emergency services. You do not need his permission for that and you never have.

You are not overstepping by being afraid for him. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and it makes no exception for a heart breaking about somebody else's body, and the Holy Spirit is in that kitchen at half past eleven with a woman who cannot say any of this out loud.

The verse names a direction

There is a line in Psalm 55 that is short and has a very specific mechanic in it.

Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.Psalm 55:22

Cast. It is a throwing word. Not carry more carefully, not organize, not manage quietly at half past eleven. Throw.

And it has a direction: upon the Lord. The burden goes from one place to another, and the verse is describing a transfer rather than a technique for holding.

Now notice what the burden actually is in your case.

It is not his symptom. His symptom is his, and it will be dealt with, or not, by him and by a doctor. What you are carrying is the fear about it, plus the secrecy, plus the loneliness of not being able to say it, and those three are genuinely yours and they are the heaviest part. Scripture already said it in Psalm 55:22, and the Holy Spirit is the one doing the work, not the sentence.

That is what is being asked for. Not his health, which is not yours to hand over. Your fear, which is.

You are not required to carry this quietly. Scripture says cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee, Psalm 55:22, and the casting is a transfer rather than a way of holding it better, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes off somebody a weight they have been carrying in the dark for a fortnight.

The secrecy is the heavier half

Let me separate the two things you are carrying, because they are being felt as one. None of that is mine to declare on my own. Scripture said it first in Psalm 55:22, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings it the distance.

The first is the fear about his health. That is real, it may or may not be proportionate, and neither of us knows.

The second is that you are doing this in secret, at night, with the phone angled away from the door. And that one is entirely within your power to end tonight. Scripture put that in writing long before you read it here, in Psalm 55:22, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes written words land.

The secrecy has a cost you have not counted. It means every evening with him now has an unspoken thing in it. It means you are watching him without his knowing. It means when he says something ordinary about how he feels you are scanning it for evidence. I have no authority to say that by myself. Scripture carries it in Psalm 55:22, and the Holy Spirit carries it to you.

That is not a marriage with a health worry in it. That is a marriage with a surveillance operation in it, and the second is much lonelier and much more corrosive than the first.

You are not meant to be alone in a house with somebody you love. Scripture says two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor, Ecclesiastes 4:9, and the reward is described as belonging to two people working together rather than to one carrying well, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a hard sentence sayable in daylight.

One sentence instead of a fortnight

Here is what replaces the searching, and it is smaller and much harder.

Say one sentence to him, in daylight, when nothing is happening and neither of you is tired.

Not a case. Not the things you have read; that would be an ambush and he would hear it as one. Not an instruction to go, because you cannot instruct him and trying will produce exactly the response it produced last time. That is Scripture's sentence and not mine, Psalm 55:22, and it is the Holy Spirit and not this page who makes it true where you are.

One sentence, about you: I am worried about you and I have been for a fortnight, and I do not know what to do with it.

That is it. No request attached.

Two things happen when you say it. The secrecy ends, which is the half you can actually put down. And he is given something he has not been given, which is the true state of his wife rather than a suggestion about his body. Men who deflect a suggestion about their health very often cannot deflect that.

He may still not go. That is his to decide and it stays his. But you will no longer be carrying it in the dark on your own.

You are not powerless here, and nothing in it requires his cooperation. Scripture says let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth, 1 John 3:18, and truth in that verse is about being straight rather than about being persuasive, and the Holy Spirit is at work in a plain sentence said in an ordinary kitchen.