We Got Back And Everything Felt Flat

The washing was the first sign.

You got in, and there was post on the mat, and within about ninety minutes the whole thing had closed over as if it had not happened. By Wednesday somebody was shouting up the stairs about shoes in the exact voice they used before you went, and you stood in the kitchen with a feeling you could not name.

I am not going to rush past this to the encouraging part, because the flatness is real and pretending otherwise is what makes people distrust articles like this one.

Coming home is genuinely hard, and here is why. It is not only that the holiday ended. It is that out there you saw something you cannot easily get at home: your family being different with each other.

Somebody was funnier. Somebody talked to you. Nobody was in a rush. You were more patient than you are in your own kitchen and you noticed it. And for a few days you thought: this is what we are actually like, underneath.

And then four days back and it is gone, and the fear underneath the flatness is that the version out there was the holiday, and this version is you, and what you saw was a temporary effect of being somewhere else.

That fear is the actual subject of this article.

What mean ye by these stones

There is a moment where a group of people cross a river and are told to do something odd on the other side.

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

What mean ye by these stones.

They had just come through something. And the instruction is not to remember it, and it is not to feel a certain way about it. It is to carry twelve actual stones out of the riverbed and put them down where they were going to live.

Physical objects. Moved from the place where the thing happened to the place where ordinary life would be resumed.

And the reason given is a question that has not been asked yet. When your children ask, in time to come. The stones exist to trigger a conversation years later, with people who were too young to remember, on a day nobody could have predicted.

That is what carrying something home looks like in scripture. Not a feeling maintained by effort. An object, or an act, moved deliberately into the ordinary place, small enough to survive.

You are able to carry something out of it into your ordinary life, and it has never once depended on keeping the feeling alive. Joshua 4:6 moves stones from the riverbed into the settled place and makes them the trigger for a future conversation, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that available to a family unpacking a bag.

What you saw was true

Here is the thing I want to say plainly about the fear, because it is the wrong way round.

The version of your family that showed up out there was not a holiday effect. It was your family, with the pressure taken off.

What changed was not who you are. What changed was that nobody had to be anywhere, the usual jobs were not present, and there was time in the day that was not accounted for. Under those conditions, different things became possible between the same people.

So what you saw is real and it is available. It is not a fantasy version of your family, it is your family under conditions you rarely arrange for yourselves.

And that means the question is not how do we get that back, which sounds impossible. The question is which of those conditions can exist on a Tuesday, and the answer is: some of them, in small amounts, if somebody deliberately makes room.

You saw something true about your own family, and it has never once been a temporary effect of being somewhere else. The written word takes stones out of the crossing and puts them into the settled land, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes what was seen out there available in a kitchen.

One thing from the trip, at home

So here is the last assignment on this site, and it is deliberately small.

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

Not a big transfer. One concrete thing. If you played a particular game in the car, play it in the kitchen. If you ate outside every night, eat outside once. If somebody made a joke that ran for four days, use it on Thursday for no reason. If there was a walk after dinner, do the walk after dinner once.

It has to be an act rather than a resolution. We are going to be more relaxed is not a thing anybody can do on a Tuesday. Chips outside on the step is.

And do not explain it. Do not say we are bringing back the holiday spirit, because the moment it is announced as a project, it becomes a thing that can fail and everybody will feel it.

Just do the thing. Somebody will notice, and the noticing is the stone.

Joshua 4:6 puts an object in the ordinary place and waits for the question to arrive later, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a small deliberate act on a Thursday.

You are able to move one thing across into an ordinary week, and it has never once needed to be announced to be real. Joshua 4:6 carries something physical out of the crossing into daily life, and the Spirit of God is the one who is in the kitchen while you do it.