Movement 3: The Pressure (The Pivot)
Biologically speaking, we have limits to how long we can carry tension. I’ve heard it said that silence can be a good teacher. Yet, I think silence can also become an exhausting guest who overstays their welcome. Eventually, carrying tension creates another kind of pressure inside. It’s like a psychological and spiritual boiling point. This is the moment when unresolved things start yelling at us!
Stop Ignoring Me!
They demand an equation: event (something happens) + experience (carrying the tension) = explanation (make it make sense).
We feel this pressure for an equal sign; a physical necessity to settle the matter. In the story of the man in the dust, there came a point where the seven days of silent sitting had to break (Job 2:7-8). The pressure of the losses, the physical sores, and the cumulative weight of the “unnamed” reached a volume where his integrity demanded speech. The silence was no longer a sanctuary; it became a pressure cooker!
In our world, this is the moment we stop trying to cope and start looking for a way out.
It’s right at this boiling point where handrails are most tempting. When the weight of trials – such as the friction of a long-term scarcity of employment, finances or health becomes too great, a cliché offers an immediate release of the pressure; to vent so we don’t explode.
Short, sticky sayings are easy enough to remember and strong enough to hold; at least at first. When tension starts building long enough, they can feel more like relief than an answer. This doesn’t make them false but it does make them functional.
- For some, the pressure settles into outrage.
- For others, certainty.
- For others still, withdrawal.
Different responses. Same impulse beneath them. Something in us wants the tension to stop pulling in so many directions at once.
Where’s the Lever?
I spoke about Mrs. Job in our first movement article. There’s a moment early in the story where Job’s wife seems to reach for some kind of lever to make the suffering stop. Whatever was happening in her thoughts, the pressure of unresolved pain had clearly become too much to simply sit beside any longer.
I’m not sure she was looking for an explanation but she did want an end to the strain – and not long after, the silence breaks completely. The friends start speaking. Once these messengers started rolling out their speeches, everyone seems to feel the need to make the suffering fit somewhere.
- To explain it.
- To organize it.
- To settle it.
Honestly, I understand that impulse. I was a church pastor for many years and pastors are supposed to have all the answers right?
It’s easy to lean into wanting to fix friction fast. And while I don’t think every explanation is right or helpful; the truth is, unresolved tension is tiring. Especially when life keeps moving at speed while you’re still carrying it.
Maybe that’s part of why we reach for explanations faster than we realize. Not always because we’ve carefully reasoned our way there. But sometimes because we’re exhausted from carrying what’s unresolved.
I get how strong the pull can be. We want to land anywhere that seems stable enough to stand on for a while.
Even if only long enough to make it through another day.