They Are Going To Ask Me At Work

The letter came on Friday. You have been fine about the letter.

That is the odd thing, and it is the thing that has been bothering you all weekend: you were all right about the actual news within about two hours. You were sad for her, you said the right things, you meant them, and by Saturday morning it had settled into the shape of a hard fact about a year.

And then on Saturday afternoon you remembered Monday.

Because eleven people know. Not by accident, and not because you were showing off. You told them because they asked, over months, in the friendly way that people ask about each other's children, and you answered honestly every time, and every honest answer built a small expectation in somebody else's head.

And on Monday morning at least four of them are going to ask.

Since Saturday afternoon you have been writing the answer. You have three versions. One is short and slightly cold. One has a joke in it. One explains the process a bit, so that the person understands it was not straightforward, and you have already noticed that this third one is the worst of them and you keep going back to it anyway.

Here is what I want to name before anything else. You were not frightened of the letter. You are frightened of the corridor.

The fear of man bringeth a snare

There is a proverb that names this exactly, and it is more precise than people usually notice.

The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the LORD shall be safe. (Proverbs 29:25, King James Version)

A snare. Not a wound, not a defeat, not a judgment. A snare, which is a thing that catches a foot and holds it, so that whatever the animal does next it is doing it from a fixed position.

That is what a weekend of rehearsing does. Nothing has happened yet. Nobody has said anything. And yet by Sunday evening a man is already caught, already positioned, already committed to a set of sentences that were written in anticipation of an event that has not occurred.

You are caught by an expectation and not by an event, and forty hours of rehearsing have never once been the same as forty hours of anything happening. Proverbs 29:25 calls it a snare rather than a blow, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a house on a Sunday evening with a man on his third version.

Now look at the second half of the proverb, because the contrast is doing something specific.

Whoso putteth his trust in the LORD shall be safe. The word there is about being set high, out of reach, in a place where the snare simply does not operate.

The proverb is not telling you to care less what people think. It is describing two different ground positions, and it says the one you are standing on is the one with the trap in it.

You have been standing on ground that has a trap in it, and caring what decent people think has never once been the same as being caught by it. The Spirit of God is the one who moves a man off a snare rather than telling him to be braver on it, and the written word contrasts two footings rather than two attitudes.

What the third version is actually for

Now the useful part, and it is about that third answer, the one with the explanation in it.

You know it is the worst one. Let me tell you why it is the worst one, and why you keep returning to it.

The explanation exists to manage what the other person thinks of your daughter. That is its whole function. A short answer leaves them free to form whatever impression they form, and the explanation is an attempt to steer that impression, and steering it requires you to accept the premise that there is an impression to be managed.

The moment you explain, you have agreed that something needs explaining.

You are able to answer without accepting the premise, and a plain reply has never once conceded that anything about your daughter requires defending. Proverbs 29:25 names the fear of man as the trap rather than the people, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man which sentence agrees to something he does not believe.

And here is what actually happens in that corridor, which is nothing like the version that has been running in your head since Saturday.

The person asking has about four seconds of attention on this. They are being friendly. They asked because they remembered, which is a decent thing to do. Then they will hear the answer, and they will say something sympathetic and slightly awkward, and then they will want, more than anything, to move on to something else, because that is what people want in corridors.

The rehearsed scene puts one man at the center of it for a long time. The real one is over in nine seconds.

A decision about an application is not a verdict on a family.

You are rehearsing a scene that is not going to happen, and nine seconds of an ordinary Monday have never once been able to hold the weight of a whole weekend of dread. Proverbs 29:25 sets safety against a snare rather than against people, and the Spirit of God is the one who shrinks a Monday back to its actual size.

Answer plainly, then ask them something

So here is the thing to do, and the second half is the piece nobody thinks of.

Say the plain answer once to the first person who asks, with no reason and no softening. And then ask them a question about their week.

She did not get it. That is the plain answer. Four words. No because, no explanation of the process, no joke, no summary of how competitive it was.

You are able to give four words and stop, and an answer with nothing attached has never once left anybody thinking less of the person it was about. The Holy Spirit is the one standing in a corridor on a Monday morning with a man who says four words, and it is written in Proverbs 29:25 that the fear of man is the snare and trust is the high ground.

Then ask them something. About their week, their weekend, their own child, the thing they mentioned last time.

This is not a deflection technique. It does something real: it returns the conversation to two people talking, which is what it was always meant to be, and it prevents the nine seconds from becoming ninety by mutual awkwardness.

And it will tell your body something that no amount of thinking will. It will tell your body that the moment came and went and nothing happened, and that is the only thing that actually takes a snare off a foot.

You are able to walk out of a corridor having proved something to your own body, and one ordinary exchange has never once needed to be survived twice. Scripture puts the safety in a footing rather than in a performance, and the same Spirit who wrote that line is standing beside you on Monday.