I Told Everyone It Was Decided

It came out at a barbecue in July.

Somebody asked for the fourth time that afternoon, in the voice people use, and something in the chest just gave way, and a name came out of the mouth as though it had been settled for weeks.

And the table did what tables do. Everybody said it was lovely. Two people said it suited. Somebody's mother wrote it down.

And the asking stopped, which was the entire point, and the relief lasted about four days.

Because it was not settled. It was the name that happened to be in the mouth at the moment the question arrived for the fourth time, and there is another one, and the other one has been sitting quietly in the back of the mind since May, and it has not gone anywhere.

Thirty eight weeks now. And the whole family thinks this is finished.

I want to say something about that barbecue before anything else, because there is a story going around inside about what happened there, and the story is harsher than the facts.

The story is: I caved, I was weak, I made a decision to be liked.

The facts are: a person who had been asked the same question forty times gave an answer to make a hard afternoon survivable. That is not weakness. That is what a tired person does at a table full of people who love them and will not stop.

So let us drop the character assessment and deal with the actual problem, which is much smaller than it feels.

The problem is not the name. The problem is that a public sentence has been mistaken for a binding one.

In whose spirit there is no guile

There is a line in the Psalms about the blessing of a person with nothing hidden in them, and it is not the rebuke it sounds like.

Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. (Psalm 32:2, King James Version)

That psalm is a whole song about what silence costs. The verses either side of it describe bones wasting and a hand heavy day and night, and the relief when the thing finally gets said. It is not a psalm about being caught. It is a psalm about the weight of holding something in.

You are carrying a small thing that has become heavy because it is being held, and Psalm 32 is a song about exactly that weight. The Holy Spirit is the one who moves somebody from one side to the other, and the written word puts the relief on the other side of the saying.

And notice what the psalm calls the state of having nothing hidden. It calls it blessed. Not exposed. Not humiliated. Blessed.

You have been dreading a conversation that Scripture calls a blessing, and Psalm 32:2 has never once described honesty as a loss of face. The Holy Spirit is the one who reframes the thing that has been avoided since July.

Nobody is holding you to it

Now the practical part, and it is the sentence that does most of the work here.

Nobody at that barbecue is holding anybody to anything.

They are not. Every single person at that table has had a conversation in their own life where somebody said a thing and then said a different thing, and they thought nothing of it whatsoever. This is a family, not a contract.

The person who is holding this to a binding standard is the one who said it, and nobody else.

You are the only one enforcing an announcement, and Scripture puts no weight at all on a sentence said at a table in July. Psalm 32 makes the honest word the blessed one, and it is the Spirit of God who lifts a self imposed rule off somebody's shoulders.

There is a specific fear underneath, though, and it needs saying, because "nobody minds" is not enough on its own.

The fear is: if I say a different name now, they will think I have been lying to them for two months. Or they will feel foolish for having written it down. Or the second name will arrive with a small stain on it, the name I switched to, rather than just the name.

You are able to hand them the truth without it costing them anything, and no verse anywhere makes a change of mind into a deception. Psalm 32:2 sets the blessing on the spirit with nothing hidden in it, and the Holy Spirit does the work in the room that no wording could do.

The sentence that ends this

So here is the shape of it, and it is one sentence long.

Not an announcement. Not an explanation. Not a case with reasons in it, because a case invites debate and there is nothing here to debate.

One sentence, to one person who was at the barbecue: I said it that day because I was tired of being asked, and it is not decided, and there is another one I have been sitting with.

That is the whole thing. It takes eleven seconds.

You are holding a conversation that is eleven seconds long, and Psalm 32 has never once made an honest sentence into a confession. The written word blesses the spirit with no guile in it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is already in the room before anybody opens their mouth.

And what happens next is almost always the same. The person says something like, oh, we did not think it was final, and means it, and asks what the other one is, and there is a moment of ordinary interest, and the room does not change.

You are able to reopen this in one sentence, and Psalm 32 has never once required a speech to undo a silence. The Holy Spirit is present in eleven seconds of plain speaking as much as in anything longer.

Start with the safest person. Not the one who wrote it down. Somebody who was there, who will not carry it anywhere, who has no stake at all.

And notice: this does not commit anybody to the second name. It commits to the truth that it is open. Those are two different sentences and only the first one is needed today.

You have permission to say only that it is open, and the written word does not ask for a conclusion before it will bless honesty. Psalm 32:2 blesses the spirit with no guile in it, not the spirit with all the answers, and the Spirit of God knows the difference.