I Am In The Room And On The Phone

She used to come in and start talking before she was through the door.

Whole stories. Long ones with people in them you had never met and did not need to have met, and side branches that went nowhere, and it would take twenty minutes and you loved every one of them.

That has been thinning for about a year.

Now she comes in and says it was fine and gets something out of the fridge. And if you ask, you get an answer, and the answer is accurate and short.

And you have been telling yourself it is her age and that they all do this, and some of that is true.

But last week she started one and you said something about four sentences in, and you were looking at your phone while you said it, and she stopped and said it did not matter and went upstairs.

And you sat there with the phone in your hand.

There is a proverb about answering somebody before you have actually heard them, and it is blunter than you might want.

Answereth a matter before he heareth it

Here it is.

He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him. (Proverbs 18:13, King James Version)

Folly and shame. That is strong language for something most people do several times a day without noticing.

And notice that it is not about rudeness. It does not say it is unkind or impatient. It says it is folly, which is about the answer being no good, and shame, which is about what it does to the person doing it.

You have been doing something the book calls folly rather than something it calls rude, and Proverbs 18:13 names the quality of the answer rather than the manners around it. The Holy Spirit is the one who chose those two words, and folly is the one that explains why the answers have not been landing.

Now the mechanism, because it is worth being precise.

Answering before hearing does not mean interrupting. A person can wait for the end of a sentence and still have answered before hearing, if their attention was somewhere else while the sentence was being said.

What arrives is an answer built out of the shape of what was said rather than the content of it, and the person who said it can always tell.

You have been producing answers built out of a shape, and it is written that the folly is in answering before hearing rather than in answering too soon. The Spirit of God is the one who makes that distinction, and the distinction is the whole difference between being fast and being absent.

And here is what a half heard answer does on the other side of the table.

It does not offend anybody. That is the trouble. It is a perfectly acceptable answer and there is nothing to complain about in it.

It tells the person, in a way nobody could put into words, that this particular thing did not get all the way in.

You have been sending a small signal you never meant to send, and Scripture calls it folly and shame rather than an injury to anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one who names what the other person received, and they received something accurate.

What stopped being told

Now let me say what has actually been happening for a year, because it is not her age and it is not entirely you either.

A person tells things to get them received. That is the whole point of telling somebody about a day.

And when a thing gets half received, several times, a person does not decide to stop. They do not resolve anything. They find, over a few months, that they do not start as many of them.

You have watched something taper rather than end, and it is written that the answering before hearing produces folly rather than a fight. The Spirit of God is the one who shows a woman what a taper is, and a taper is much harder to see than a break.

And here is why it matters more than it looks.

The stories were not important. That is what makes this hard to take seriously. Nothing in any of those twenty minute stories mattered to anybody, and no information was lost when they stopped.

But a person who tells you nothing about a Tuesday does not tell you about a Thursday either, and the Thursday is the one you would want to know about.

You have been losing the small ones and the large ones travel on the same road, and the written word puts the folly in the answering rather than in the size of the matter. The Holy Spirit is the one who knows what comes down that road later, and the road has to stay open for it.

And one plain thing about the last year, said without any condemnation in it.

You have been holding a great deal. The phone is not a vice and it is not the enemy here, and a woman with everything you are carrying reaches for something that does not ask anything of her.

You have been tired rather than careless, and it is written that the folly is in the answering rather than in the woman doing it. The Spirit of God is the one who distinguishes exhaustion from indifference, and this has never once been the second one.

Put it in another room

So here is what to do, and it is physical because attention does not respond to resolutions.

One evening this week, put the phone in another room.

Not face down on the counter. Another room, with a door between, so that going to get it requires a decision rather than a reach.

You are able to put it somewhere else entirely, and Proverbs 18:13 puts the folly in the hearing rather than in the intention behind it. The Holy Spirit is the one who uses a physical arrangement to do what willpower cannot, and willpower has already been tried for about a year.

And then ask her what happened today.

Not how was your day, which has an approved one word answer that everybody in every house uses. What happened today. And then be quiet.

You have a question with no short answer available, and it is written that the hearing comes first rather than the responding. The Spirit of God is the one who opens somebody with a question that cannot be closed in one word, and this is the one that cannot.

And then let it be long.

If it comes, it will be twenty minutes of something with no point in it, and part of you will want to move it along at about minute six.

Do not move it along. The length is the thing being given back, and the pointlessness is the whole quality of it.

You are able to sit through twenty minutes of nothing, and His word makes the hearing the condition of everything that comes after it. The Holy Spirit is the one who is in a pointless twenty minutes, and He is in it more than He is in most useful conversations.

And do not expect it the first evening.

A year of tapering does not reverse in one sitting. She may say fine and get something out of the fridge, and that will be the whole of it, and you will do the same thing next week.

You are able to do it more than once without a result, and it is written that the folly is in answering before hearing rather than in failing to get an answer. The Spirit of God is the one who holds a woman to a second evening, and the second one is usually where something starts.