I Stopped Answering At Three In The Morning

There were four and Rich was awake for every single one of them.

That is the fact he cannot get around, and it is the reason none of the reassurance works. He did not sleep through them. He was not out of the room. He lay in the dark with his phone face down on the nightstand and the screen lighting the ceiling, four times between half past two and ten to four, and he did not move.

He had told him. That is the thing everybody says when Rich manages to say any of it out loud: you told him, mate. And it is true. They had a conversation in a car in June, a good one, honest on both sides, and Rich had said, plainly, that he could not do the nights any more, that he would be there in the daytime, any day, but that the three in the mornings were taking him apart.

His friend had said he understood. He had meant it at the time.

And in September at half past two the phone went, and Rich lay there.

Nothing happened that night. His friend was fine, or fine enough, and rang him at eleven the next morning about something completely unrelated and did not mention it.

That was five months ago and Rich has not slept properly since.

He is forty. He has a wife who was awake for those calls too, and two children, and a job, and it was true that the nights were taking him apart, and every one of those things is a fact and none of them help at three in the morning.

I know why I did it. And I still think that a man who does not pick up is not what I said I was.

And here is where I stop talking about Rich, because you stopped answering too, and everybody has told you that you had to, and none of them were awake for the fourth one.

Let me say the first thing before anything else: I am not going to rule on your decision. I was not in the car in June and I do not know your household and it is not mine to judge. What I am going to deal with is a man who has not slept in five months, because that is the actual situation.

He is the one who sent them away to rest

Let me put the true thing down first, because it comes from a direction you will not have expected.

Rest is not the opposite of love, and stopping is not the opposite of caring. There is a scene where people are so busy with genuinely needy human beings that they cannot eat, and Christ Himself does something that would look like abandonment on a spreadsheet:

And He said to them, Come you yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.Mark 6:31

Look at the situation He does that in.

There were many coming and going. That means there were real people with real needs still arriving, and the disciples were not out of work, they were overwhelmed by a genuine and continuous demand.

And Christ does not tell them to push through it. He does not commend the man who keeps going until he falls over. He takes them out of the flow of need, deliberately, and calls it rest a while, and He is the one who initiates it.

So there is a limit, and it was set by God rather than invented by a tired man in June, and Scripture is where I stand that rather than my own opinion of your decision, and God's Spirit is not standing over you at three in the morning holding a phone.

Awake for all four is not the same as guilty

Now let me be exact about the thing that is actually crushing you, because it is not the decision.

It is that you were awake.

If you had slept through them you would have a different five months. You have said as much to yourself a hundred times. And what your mind has done with being awake is to convert it into evidence: a man who lay there is a man who chose it, and choosing it makes him something.

Look at what being awake for all four actually proves.

It proves you were not indifferent. An indifferent man sleeps. It proves that not answering cost you the entire night, four times, and that it went on costing you for five months. It proves you were with him in the only way a wrecked man could be, which is not the way you wanted and it is not nothing.

That is not a defense of the decision, because I am not ruling on it. It is a correction of the evidence, because you have been reading your own wakefulness backward.

And here is the ground under you while you do it: you are not condemned for that night. There is no charge, and the accusation running in you at three in the morning is not the Spirit of God, because He convicts in order to restore and He does not run the same night at a man for five months. That is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it something you can lie down inside rather than something you would like to accept.

And the practical half, plainly, because a message without it has failed you. Real help exists for you and none of it is small faith. Family groups for people who love somebody using are full of friends who stopped picking up, and there is not one thing you could say in that room that would be new. A counselor for you is not a betrayal of him. And here is a practical thing worth doing: agree with somebody, in daylight, what happens at three in the morning now. A person who is not you, a number that is not yours, a plan you can tell him about. And if he is ever in danger, get medical help immediately, and in the United States he or you can call or text 988 at any hour. If a call ever comes and there is danger in it, that is a call for the emergency services and not a test of your resolve.