I Laid The Table For Five Again

The fifth plate was in your hand before you noticed.

That was Tuesday. Doing what has been done every evening for nineteen years, moving round the table, and you got to the place that has been his since he was about four, and it was already down before anything caught up.

And then you picked it up again and took it back and did not say anything about it.

That is the third time since September.

I want to talk about that plate, and about what it is doing, because I think there has been a small shame attached to it and I do not think there should be.

Here is the difficulty with this particular grief, and it is why it is so lonely: everybody, including the person having it, thinks it should not be one.

He has not died. He has not gone off badly or in anger. He has gone away to do a thing that was wanted for him, worked toward, celebrated on the day, and it is going well. There is nothing to grieve and everybody knows it, and saying any of this out loud would produce a reminder of how fortunate this family is, and the reminder would be correct.

So it has not been said out loud.

And that is the whole trouble, because a grief that is not permitted does not stop happening. It stops being mentioned. And then it turns up in the kitchen at half past six with a plate in somebody's hand, three times since September.

Thy seat will be empty

There is a line in First Samuel about a place at a table, and the reason it is in Scripture at all is remarkable.

Then Jonathan said to David, To morrow is the new moon: and thou shalt be missed, because thy seat will be empty. (1 Samuel 20:18, King James Version)

Thou shalt be missed, because thy seat will be empty.

Sit with the fact that this sentence exists. That is a man saying to his friend, plainly and without embarrassment, that his absence from a table will be noticed, and that the noticing will take the form of a chair with nobody in it.

There is no apology in it. He does not say I know it is only a meal. He does not point out that David is alive and well and will be back, which he is. He simply states that the seat will be empty and that this will register as a missing.

You are noticing a chair, and Scripture noticed one first, and a seat with nobody in it has never once needed an apology attached to it. First Samuel 20:18 states the missing plainly and does not qualify it, and the Holy Spirit is the one present in a kitchen at half past six.

And notice who is speaking. Jonathan is not a fragile man. This is a soldier, a king's son, somebody with a great deal else to think about, and the empty chair is worth a sentence to him.

So the thing that has been done quietly and slightly ashamed of, the noticing of a chair, is the same thing this passage records without a word of qualification.

You have a table that is missing somebody, and a real fact about your evenings has never once been made unreal by being fortunate as well. The Spirit of God is the one who takes the embarrassment off a thing before He does anything else with it, and the written word is entirely comfortable saying the missing out loud.

Two things are true and neither cancels

Here is the practical part, and it is the thing nobody has said since September.

There is an attempt going on in that kitchen to hold one feeling when there are two.

Every time the loss shows up, something immediately produces the correction: he is fine, this is good, this is what we wanted, other people have real problems. And the correction is true. Every word of it is true.

But it is being used to cancel the other thing, and it does not cancel it. It puts it underneath, where it goes on running without supervision, and comes out sideways three months later in the form of a plate.

You are allowed both of them at the same time, and one true sentence about a boy doing well has never once been required to put out the other one. First Samuel 20:18 keeps the friendship and the empty seat in a single verse without ranking them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets two things stand where a person has been holding only one.

You are holding two true things rather than one, and a house being quieter has never once been made less true by a boy doing well. First Samuel 20:18 records both the friendship and the empty seat without reconciling them, and the Holy Spirit is the one present where a feeling gets named rather than corrected.

And I want to name the specific fear underneath, because it is usually there.

There is a small dread that letting the second thing be felt properly turns a mother into somebody who makes her son feel guilty for leaving, or who is not coping, or who has to be managed on phone calls.

That is not what happens. What actually makes a young person feel that is a parent carrying something unnamed, because they can hear it in the voice and they cannot locate it. A named feeling is far lighter for everybody than an unnamed one.

A quiet house is not a verdict on a mother.

You are able to name a thing and hand nobody a weight, and a feeling with a name on it has never once been heavier than the same feeling with none. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a named thing carryable, and 1 Samuel 20:18 puts the missing into plain speech between two people.

Say his name at the table

So here is the assignment, and it is small and it is out loud.

Say their name out loud at the table once this week. At the table, during a meal, with whoever is there. Not on the phone to him, and not alone in the kitchen afterward.

And say something ordinary that has his name in it. He would have hated this. He rang on Sunday. He used to sit there and do that thing with the salt. One sentence, and then carry on eating.

You are able to say his name in an ordinary voice, and a name handled carefully has never once got lighter for the care. It is written in First Samuel 20:18 that the name and the missing sit in the same plain sentence, and the Holy Spirit is the one present at a table where somebody speaks casually.

Here is why this works when thinking about him does not.

At the moment his name is doing something strange in that house: everybody is being slightly careful with it. Not avoiding it exactly, but nobody says it casually at a meal, because there is a small charge on it and everybody can feel the charge. And a name that is handled carefully becomes heavier every week it is handled carefully.

Saying it in an ordinary voice, in the middle of an ordinary meal, about something unremarkable, takes the charge off.

You are able to take a charge off a name by using it, and one unremarkable sentence has never once been too small a thing to change what a table feels like. Scripture says the name and the absence together and does not lower its voice for either, and the same Spirit who kept that line in the book is at your table this week.