I Am Going At Thirty Five

You said it before anybody asked. Again.

Second week, first hour, before the thing had even properly started: something light about being the ancient one, delivered with a small laugh, and everybody smiled and it was fine.

And then you said a version of it again on the Thursday.

It has become the thing you lead with. You walk into a room, and inside about ninety seconds there is a remark about your age, produced by you, aimed at nobody, and it arrives before anybody has had a chance to think one thing about it either way.

Here is what I want to name at the start, and it is the whole architecture of the problem.

Nobody in that room has said anything.

Not one person. Not a look, not a remark, not a raised eyebrow. Every single instance of your age being an issue in that room has been generated by the person it belongs to, in advance, to get ahead of something that has not happened.

Every thing beautiful in his time

There is a line in Ecclesiastes about timing that is usually read as comfort and is actually a statement about how things work.

He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11, King James Version)

In his time.

Not: in the same time. Not: in the expected time. In his time, which is a phrase about a thing having its own proper hour rather than sharing everybody else's.

And the second half is the one that matters here: no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. Nobody, including the person living it, can see the whole shape of a life while they are inside it.

You are in your own time and not in anybody else's, and a thing arriving at its own hour has never once been a thing arriving late. Ecclesiastes 3:11 gives each thing its own time rather than a shared one, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a room where somebody said it again before anybody asked.

Now the phrase in the middle: he hath set the world in their heart.

That is a description of a person who can sense that there is a whole shape to things and cannot see it. Which is exactly the condition that produces the remark in the first ninety seconds: a sense that there is an order everybody else is in, and an inability to see where you fit in it.

The verse says that inability is the ordinary human condition and not a fault in one woman.

You have been handed a limit that every person in that room shares, and not being able to see the shape of your own life has never once meant you are out of position in it. The Spirit of God is the one who knows the whole work from beginning to end, and the written word names the not seeing as universal.

What the remark is actually doing

Now the practical part, and it is about the ninety seconds.

The remark is a pre-emptive strike, and its purpose is to control what they think before they think it.

That is what it is for. If you say it first, lightly, with a laugh, then nobody can say it, and nobody can think it without you having already agreed, and the whole subject is neutralized in advance and on your terms.

It works. That is why it has become automatic.

You are getting ahead of a thing that has not happened, and a room that has said nothing has never once been a room that was about to. Ecclesiastes 3:11 puts each thing in its own time without ranking the hours, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman what she is defending against.

And here is the cost, which is precise and worth counting.

You have made your age the first fact about you in every room, and a detail nobody had reached for has never once had to be the headline. Ecclesiastes 3:11 sets each thing in its own hour and compares none of them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a headline back out of a woman's own hands.

That is what it buys. Nobody in that room would have arrived at your age as the notable thing about you for weeks, if ever, because people mostly notice whether somebody is any good and whether they are pleasant to be around. But it has been handed to them, first, in the first ninety seconds, by you, as the headline.

So they now hold it, because you gave it to them.

Starting later is not a verdict on anybody.

You are able to stop supplying the headline, and a fact that nobody in the room had noticed has never once been made smaller by being announced first. The Spirit of God is the one who takes a headline out of a woman's hands, and Ecclesiastes 3:11 sets every thing in its own hour and never compares two of them.

Walk in and say nothing about it

So here is the thing to do, and it is a subtraction rather than an addition.

Walk into the next one without saying anything about your age. And let somebody else raise it if they want to.

Nothing. No light remark. No self deprecating opener. No reference to being the ancient one, the mature one, the one who remembers when.

You are able to walk into a room without handing anybody the headline, and ninety seconds of saying nothing about it has never once been the same as pretending anything. It is written in Ecclesiastes 3:11 that he hath made every thing beautiful in his time, and the Holy Spirit is the one walking in beside somebody who has decided to say nothing.

And here is what to expect, because the first time will be uncomfortable.

There will be about four minutes where it feels enormous and unaddressed, and everything in you will want to release the pressure with the remark, and the pressure is entirely internal and nobody else in the room can feel any of it.

Then it will pass, and you will be a person in a room.

And if somebody does raise it, which occasionally somebody will, answer it in four words and move on. Yes, I am thirty five. Not a paragraph, not a laugh, not a story about how you came to be here.

You are able to answer in four words if it comes up at all, and one direct question has never once needed a paragraph to satisfy the person who asked it. Scripture puts each thing in its own time and offers no explanation for the timing of any of them, and the same Spirit who wrote it that way is beside you when the four minutes pass.