There is a specific kind of shame that a great many decent people carry, and it is not shame about anything they did wrong.
Picture the woman it belongs to. On Thursday she said, in a meeting, in a light voice, that she had been in since six that morning.
It was true. She had been. And it was also not the reason she said it.
She said it because she wanted somebody to notice, and she heard herself say it, and she has been quietly appalled at herself ever since.
That is the whole event. It took four seconds. Nobody in that room thought anything of it at all, and she has thought about it for six days.
And here is what she has concluded, which is the thing that needs interrupting. She has concluded that she has become somebody who fishes. That she is needy. That she used to just get on with it and now she is angling for scraps, and that this is a decline in her character.
None of that is what happened.
What happened is that a person went about eleven months without a single sentence of acknowledgment from anybody, and a completely ordinary human appetite eventually came out sideways. That is not a character decline. That is what an unmet ordinary need does when it is denied a straight route.
And the fishing is not even the injury. The injury is the second layer: she is now ashamed of a need that everybody has, which means she cannot bring it to anybody, which means it will keep coming out sideways, which will produce more shame.
That loop will run for years if nobody interrupts it.
The psalm does not apologize for the appetite
There is an image at the start of Psalm 42 that people quote constantly and rarely read as being about a body.
As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. (Psalm 42:1, King James Version)
Panteth. That is an animal in distress. A deer that has run a long way and needs water and is making a noise about it.
The psalmist chooses that image on purpose. He could have compared his longing to something dignified. He compares it to a thirsty animal, which is undignified and physical and impossible to be polite about.
And nowhere in the psalm does he apologize for the wanting. He does not open with a note about how he ought to be beyond this by now.
You are not being asked to be beyond your own needs, and Psalm 42 opens by comparing longing to a panting animal rather than to something composed (Psalm 42:1), and the Holy Spirit is the one who inspired an image that refuses to make wanting into a fault.
And a few verses later he does something even more useful. He speaks to himself, out loud, in the psalm.
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God. (Psalm 42:5)
He addresses the state rather than being ruled by it, and he does not pretend it is not there. He names it, asks it a question, and then instructs it.
You have permission to speak to your own state rather than being run by it, and Psalm 42:5 has a man asking his own soul a direct question out loud (Psalm 42:5), and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that possible for somebody who has been silently prosecuting herself for six days.
The water that answers a different thirst
There is a moment at a well in John where Jesus meets a woman who has been trying to get a genuine need met through a series of routes that did not work.
He does not tell her she should not be thirsty. That is the striking thing about the whole conversation.
But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. (John 4:14)
He answers the thirst by offering water. He does not answer it by correcting her appetite.
Which matters enormously here, because the woman in the meeting has been trying to correct her appetite for six days, and it has not worked and it will not work, because the appetite is not the problem.
You have a thirst that is answered rather than corrected, and John 4 has Jesus offering water instead of telling a woman to want less (John 4:14), and it is the Holy Spirit who is named in that chapter as the thing the water was a picture of.
And notice what He offers. A well in the person. Not a delivery. A source, inside, that does not depend on anybody at the workplace being observant on a Thursday.
You have been offered a source rather than a supply, and John 4:14 describes a well springing up inside a person rather than a bucket handed over (John 4:14), and the Spirit of God is the one who is that well in an actual week.
What this is not
Let me be careful, because this could easily become a rebuke dressed as comfort.
This is not saying that God being enough means people should not thank her. That is a sentence used to shut people up and it is not in this article. Human acknowledgment is a real good and its absence is a real lack.
It is also not telling her to stop wanting it. That is the thing that has been failing for six days.
And it is not promising anybody says something next week. They may not have said anything in eleven months for reasons that have nothing to do with her.
And plainly: if the not being seen has begun to reach past work, if you have started to feel that nobody would notice if you were gone, if you cannot get out of bed, or if some part of you has begun wanting it all to stop, that is bigger than a meeting. Call or text the 988 crisis line, and say the true version out loud to a doctor or a counselor or a pastor you trust. Getting help is not a failure of faith.
You are not being told your need is the problem, and Psalm 42 spends its whole first line legitimizing an appetite rather than curing one (Psalm 42:1), and the Holy Spirit is the one who can hold a real need and a settled soul in the same person at the same time.
So here is the turn, and it is about the route rather than the appetite.
You are carrying an ordinary human need rather than a character defect, and Psalm 42:1 compares that kind of longing to a panting deer without one word of apology (Psalm 42:1), and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an undignified image chosen on purpose and uses it to get somebody off their own back.
Now the counterfeit, and in a good person it wears humility as a costume. It says: needing to be noticed means something has gone wrong in you. Look at the shape of that. It names the person rather than the thing, it opens no door, and its only instruction is to be ashamed of an ordinary appetite. Conviction from the Holy Spirit names one specific thing and always opens a door in the same breath.
You have not declined into somebody who fishes, and John 4:14 answers a thirst with water rather than with an instruction to want less (John 4:14), and that work belongs to the Spirit of God, who has been present for all eleven of those unacknowledged months.
Nothing here promises the office starts noticing. What is settled is that the appetite is legitimate and biblically described, that a hinted need cannot be answered and a stated one can, and that a woman is not required to be ashamed of being a person.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, by the fire or the window or wherever it is quiet. You are in Christ, and that is what makes the authority to speak over your own heart delegated rather than invented. God inspired a psalm that compares longing to a thirsty animal, so speak to the shame that has been sitting on an ordinary need, and then leave the outcome to Him.
- Shame about needing to be seen, you are not humility and you have made a fault out of being a person. The Word of God says as the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul, and nobody apologized for that line.
- Loop that makes wanting a fault, you are broken in the name of Jesus. Psalm 42 has a man asking his own soul why it is cast down, so I get to speak to my own state and not be run by it.
- Father, John 4 says the water You give becomes a well springing up inside a person. I ask plainly today instead of angling for thanks for a year, and I thank You that Your Spirit is the well and not the bucket.
Psalm 42:1
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