The Number That Sets My Mood

By ten past seven Delia knows what kind of day it is going to be, and she has not spoken to anybody yet.

It takes about four seconds. Alarm, sit up, look. And whatever the figure is, the next twelve hours arrange themselves around it before she has put a foot on the floor. On a good reading she is generous in traffic and patient with the woman on the desk beside her and rings her mother in the evening. On a thin one she is short, briefly, with people who have done nothing, and she notices it happening and cannot get underneath it.

Nothing dramatic. She is not in trouble and there is no crisis anywhere near it. The difference between the two readings is often small enough that it would not change a single decision she makes all day.

It changes the weather, though. Every time.

She is twenty-nine and she would tell you, without hesitating and without performing, that she trusts God. It is not a line. She has prayed through two genuinely hard years and she came out the other side still praying.

Ask her what sets the temperature of a Tuesday, and the honest answer is a different answer, and she has never once put those two answers next to each other.

Your version might not be a screen. It might be a figure your mind produces before you have decided to think about anything. It might be that somebody could predict your whole mood at eleven in the morning if they knew one thing you saw at seven.

Nobody is accusing you of anything. The evidence here is not a motive; it is order and effect, and both of those can be watched.

Something has been given the deciding.

Nothing has to be wrong for something to be out of order

Let me put the freeing thing first, or you will spend this whole page defending yourself and hear none of it.

Looking is not sin. Knowing what you have is not sin. Being careful with what you are responsible for is not sin, and Scripture never treats a person who keeps track of their own affairs as somebody of small faith. If you came here braced for a page that calls carefulness faithlessness, put that down. It is not true and this page will not say it.

The question is not whether you look. It is what gets to speak first in a morning, and whether you ever chose it.

David asks for something specific about the early hours, and the wording is worth slowing down on.

Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning; for in thee do I trust: cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; for I lift up my soul unto thee.Psalm 143:8

Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning.

Notice he does not ask to feel better. He asks to hear something, and he asks for it to arrive in the morning specifically, which tells you he understood something about how a day gets set.

And notice who does the causing. Cause me. He is not manufacturing a mood and he is not talking himself round. He asks for something to be said to him early, and then says what it produces: for in thee do I trust.

You have a morning that can be told something else first. Not a temperature you have to generate by effort. The written word has a man ask for the early hours to be spoken into rather than managed, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes that live in a woman sitting up in bed at ten past seven.

Now let me say something about the app, because it has done nothing wrong.

It is a tool and it works. Nothing on this page wants you to delete it, and no rule is coming about how often is acceptable. The trouble is not that you look. The trouble is that a tool has been given the setting of the weather, and weather is not a thing a tool can carry, which is why a small difference in a figure can produce a real difference in how you treat a colleague.

You are not being asked to become careless. The written word never scolds anybody for knowing where they stand, and the Holy Spirit is not embarrassed by a woman who keeps track.

And now the thing that actually costs.

It is not the mood. Moods pass. It is that on the thin mornings you are short with people who have done nothing, and you can see it happening from the inside and cannot get under it, and then you carry that as well.

You are not condemned by a temperature you did not set. For in thee do I trust, and David puts the trusting after the hearing rather than before it. The Holy Spirit has been in every one of those four second mornings with you.