Seven in the Morning at the Big Shop

The car park is nearly empty at ten to seven and there are four staff and a man restocking bread, and that is the whole point.

She knows the layout well enough now to do it in eleven minutes. She knows which end to start at. She knows that if she goes in on a Saturday afternoon she will get halfway down the long aisle, the one with the fridges on both sides and no way to see over, and her chest will start doing the thing.

It happened first about two years ago and it happened for no reason. That is what nobody understands. There was no bad news that week. She was buying washing powder.

What her body did in that aisle was so total, and so much like something serious, that she sat in the car afterwards for twenty minutes and then drove home and did not tell her husband, because she could not think of any way to say it that did not sound like she was losing her mind.

Since then: seven in the morning. Smaller shops when she can. A list, always, because a list is something to look at. And a route home that does not go past the big roundabout, which is a separate thing that started later and which she has also never mentioned.

Nobody knows. Two years.

That is you, and the shame is doing more damage than the aisle.

This is not a faith problem

Let me put that down before anything else, because it is the sentence most likely to have got into you.

If you have been anywhere near religious talk about fear, you may have picked up the idea that a woman who really trusted God would not be standing in a supermarket unable to breathe, and that what happened in that aisle is therefore evidence about your relationship with Him.

It is not. It has never been. Scripture says what time I am afraid, I will trust in thee, Psalm 56:3, and it leaves the fear standing in the sentence, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and into a life.

A body that produces alarm in a place where nothing is wrong is doing a thing bodies do, and Scripture nowhere treats it as a spiritual failing. The Bible is full of people whose bodies gave out under fear: Elijah under a tree asking to die after the greatest day of his ministry, David saying his heart is sore pained within him, Jesus in a garden sweating and asking for the cup to pass. Not one of them is corrected for what their body did.

You are not further from God in that aisle. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and it puts no condition of composure in the sentence, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that near enough to lean on at ten to seven in a car park.

And if this has taken over more of your week than you can manage, people work with exactly this and are very good at it. Going to them is not a lesser road than praying. It never was.

The psalm admits it first

There is a line in Psalm 56 that most people quote from the second half, and the first half is what makes it usable.

What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.Psalm 56:3

What time I am afraid. Not if. He is not describing a hypothetical, and he is not describing a fear he has already dealt with. He states, in writing, in a psalm, that there are times when he is afraid, and then he says what he does inside those times.

That is a very different sentence from the one people usually hear, which is a demand that trust replace fear. This one has both in it at once, in the same breath, with the fear named first.

Trust here is not a feeling that arrives to cancel the other feeling. It is something a frightened person does while still frightened.

You are allowed to be trusting God and afraid in the same aisle. Scripture says what time I am afraid, I will trust in thee, Psalm 56:3, and it puts the fear in the sentence rather than requiring it to be gone first, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a real thing to stand on rather than a nice construction.

The hours you have rearranged

Here is what two years has actually cost, and it is not the eleven minutes at seven.

Count it up. The early mornings. The smaller shops. The route that avoids the roundabout. The birthday meal you got out of in the spring, which you gave a reason for that was true and was not the reason. The fact that you drive rather than take the bus now and always have a reason ready.

None of those was announced. Each one was reasonable on its own day. And together they are a woman who has been quietly rebuilding her week around a body she has not told anybody about.

And underneath all of it, the thing that is really doing the work: the shame. Not the fear. The shame of being somebody this happens to.

You are not disgraceful for having a body that does this. Scripture says like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him, for he knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are dust, Psalm 103:13-14, and he knoweth our frame is the whole point, and the Holy Spirit is not embarrassed by a person's nervous system.

Say it to one person

Here is the practical thing, and it is not about going back on a Saturday.

Tell your husband. Not the whole two years in one evening, and not with a plan attached. One sentence: something happens to me in big shops and it has been going on for about two years.

I know exactly why you have not. You have run it forward and you can see his face, and the questions, and the possibility that he will suggest something practical that misses the point entirely, and you have decided in advance that being alone with it is cheaper. Scripture settles that in Psalm 56:3, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it rather than these words.

It is not cheaper. Two years of a woman managing her own week in secret is not cheaper than one difficult conversation, and you have been paying the higher price every single week without noticing that you chose it.

You were not meant to carry this alone. Scripture says confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed, James 5:16, and it puts no shame in the sentence anywhere, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets one plain sentence out of somebody who has been alone with something for two years.