We Told Everybody In Advance

The trouble is that you were happy.

That is the entire origin of this. Nobody was showing off. You were a household with something good on the horizon and you talked about it the way people talk about good things, which is constantly and to everybody.

The woman two doors down knows. The man at church who always asks knows. Your sister told your aunt, who told at least four people at a funeral in June. Somebody at your work has been asking about it since February with genuine interest and no agenda whatsoever.

And now there is a decision that went the other way, and it has to travel back along every single one of those lines.

You worked out on Sunday that there are about twenty three people, and they have been going round in your head since, sorted by awkwardness, and there is one in particular that has been dreaded since about Tuesday.

Here is what I want to say first. There is a version of this article that would gently suggest you should have been more guarded, and I am not going to write that version, because it would be untrue and it would be cruel.

You were not indiscreet. You were pleased about your own child in public, which is one of the more decent things a person can do, and the fact that it now has to be corrected does not turn it retrospectively into a mistake.

Boast not thyself of to morrow

There is a proverb about tomorrow that sounds like a rebuke and is actually a mercy.

Boast not thyself of to morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. (Proverbs 27:1, King James Version)

Read the reason clause, because the reason is the whole of it.

For thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. The instruction is not built on modesty being a virtue. It is built on a plain fact about human beings: nobody has access to tomorrow. Nobody. The proverb is describing a limit that applies to everybody equally, and it is not describing a fault in one family who talked too much.

You are subject to a limit that every person on earth stands under, and a family who spoke about tomorrow has never once been a family who did something wrong. Proverbs 27:1 grounds the whole instruction in what nobody knows rather than in what somebody should have done, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a kitchen with a list of twenty three people.

And that reframes what has to happen next, entirely.

If the last eight months were a failure of discretion, then the twenty three conversations are twenty three small humiliations, and you will carry each one like a bill being paid.

If the last eight months were an ordinary family talking about an ordinary hope under the ordinary limit that everybody lives under, then the twenty three conversations are twenty three ordinary updates, and there is nothing owing anywhere.

You are able to decide what those conversations are before you have any of them, and a thing that is genuinely nobody's fault has never once needed to be carried like a bill. Proverbs 27:1 puts every human being under the same limit with respect to tomorrow, and the Holy Spirit is the one who settles what a conversation is on the way to it.

You have an update to give and not a debt to pay, and eight months of talking about a hope have never once put a family in arrears with anybody. The Spirit of God is the one who decides what a conversation is before it is had, and the written word puts the limit on all of us and never once shames the one who ran into it.

What you are actually dreading

Now let me name the one that has been dreaded since Tuesday, because it is worth looking at directly.

It is not the hardest person. It is the kindest one.

It is the one who will be genuinely sorry, whose face will do something, who will say oh no and mean it. Because the difficult people can be handled with a flat sentence and a change of subject, and the kind ones require you to stand still inside their sympathy, and standing still inside somebody's sympathy is the specific thing you cannot currently manage.

You are able to receive kindness even when it is uncomfortable, and a person being sorry for your daughter has never once been a person pitying your family. Proverbs 27:1 puts every human being in the same position with respect to tomorrow, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man stand still in front of somebody else's decency.

And there is a second thing that has been running underneath the list, and it has almost nothing to do with the twenty three people.

The telling was part of the hoping. Every time you said it out loud to somebody, it became slightly more real, which is why families do this. And so the correcting is not just socially awkward. Each of those twenty three conversations un-makes one of the small structures that the hope was built out of.

That is why a two minute exchange at a church door feels disproportionately heavy. It is not the exchange. It is a piece of the building coming down.

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

You are dismantling something you built out of hope and not paying for a mistake, and twenty three short conversations have never once been twenty three judgments. The written word names the limit and offers no blame with it, and the Spirit of God is the one present at a church door when a small structure comes down.

Say it plainly to the first one who asks

So here is the thing to do, and it is smaller than the list.

Say the plain correction to the first person who brings it up, in one sentence. And let the awkwardness belong to the moment rather than to you.

One sentence. It did not come off. That is all.

Not a summary of the process. Not an account of how competitive it was. Not a mention of what she is doing instead, which you do not owe anybody and which turns a correction into a defense.

You are able to correct something in one sentence, and a plain update has never once required an explanation to accompany it. The Holy Spirit is the one standing beside somebody at a church door saying four words, and it is written in Proverbs 27:1 that nobody knows what a day may bring forth.

And on the awkwardness: there will be some. Two or three seconds of it, in most of the twenty three.

That awkwardness belongs to the moment. It is what happens when a person has to change the shape of what they thought about somebody else's family, and it is not evidence about you, and it does not have to be smoothed over by you.

Most people try to remove the awkwardness by talking through it, which is what turns a four word correction into a two minute explanation. Say the sentence and let the other person have their three seconds. They will fill it. That is what people do.

You are able to let a silence be somebody else's to fill, and three seconds of ordinary awkwardness have never once needed a family to explain their way out of it. Scripture states the limit in one line and adds nothing to soften it, and the same Spirit who kept that verse that short is with you at the church door on Sunday.