I Explained It Before She Even Opened It

You have watched it happen.

That is what makes this different from a worry. This is not something you are afraid might go wrong. You have stood in a room and seen it go wrong, more than once, and you know the exact shape of it.

It goes like this. You hold it out. And in the two seconds before it reaches their hands, a sentence comes out of you.

It is not much this year. Or: I saw it and thought of you but it is nothing really. Or: I wanted to do something better and it has been a strange few months.

And you watch the whole moment change.

Before the sentence, it was a person receiving something. After the sentence, it is a person managing your feelings about what they are receiving, and they have to say something kind now, and both of you know it.

The thing itself never had a chance to be what it was. You have seen this and you do it again anyway.

There is a proverb about the point at which words start doing damage, and it is not about what the words say.

He that refraineth his lips is wise

Here it is.

In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin: but he that refraineth his lips is wise. (Proverbs 10:19, King James Version)

In the multitude of words. That is a quantity, not a content. The proverb is not saying that the words were unkind or untrue. It is observing that past a certain volume, harm gets in, regardless of what is being said.

And every word in your sentence is true. That is what has made it so hard to stop. It really is less this year, you really did want to do something else, and none of it is a lie.

You have been true and harmful at the same time, and the Holy Spirit is the one who located it there. Proverbs 10:19 puts the trouble in the multitude rather than in the content of what gets said, and locating it there is what makes it fixable.

Now the second half, and notice which of two obvious solutions it picks.

He that refraineth his lips is wise. Not: he that chooses his words carefully. Not: he that finds a better way to say it. Refraineth. Holds back. Does not release the sentence at all.

You are being offered a subtraction rather than an improvement, and it is written that the wisdom is in the refraining rather than in the wording. The Spirit of God is the one who chose the simpler of the two roads there, and He chose it because the other one does not work.

And it is worth seeing why the other one does not work.

It has already been tried. A lighter version, a funnier version, a version that mentions it only in passing. And every one of those still hands the person the information that there is something to be managed.

There is no phrasing of that sentence that does not do the thing. The only version that does not do it is the one that stays inside.

You have run out of better wordings, and the Holy Spirit is the one who ends a search for a better sentence. His word skips straight past the wording to the refraining, and He ends it by removing the sentence.

What the explanation is trying to do

Now let me name what the reflex is actually for, because it is not thoughtlessness and it deserves an honest account.

The sentence is an attempt to control the meaning.

Handing somebody something without commentary means the meaning is theirs. They decide what it says. There is no vote in it for the giver, and for a few seconds she stands there completely undefended.

The explanation is a way of getting a vote. It says: before you decide what this means, let me tell you what it means.

You have been reaching for a vote you were never going to get, and it is written that in the multitude of words harm gets in. The Spirit of God is the one who tells a woman what her own reflex is for, and He does it without any accusation attached.

And here is the difficulty with getting the vote.

It works. That is the awful part. The sentence does succeed in controlling the meaning. It just controls it in the wrong direction, because the meaning it installs is: this is a smaller thing and we are both aware of it.

You have never once said a sentence that installed a good meaning. There is no such sentence.

You are able to leave the meaning with them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an undefended moment safe. Scripture puts the wisdom in the holding back rather than in the steering, and undefended is the whole condition of it.

And there is one more thing under it, said gently.

The two seconds are unbearable because they are the moment you find out. Not what they think of the object. What they think of you.

You are not being assessed in those two seconds, and it is written that he that refraineth his lips is wise rather than that he is exposed. The Spirit of God is the one who stands in a gap like that, and He has been standing in it every year while you were talking through it.

How to stop when it has already started

So here is the practical part, and it is in two halves because the reflex is fast.

The first half is a decision made in advance, on a different day, in a quiet room. Decide now that this year the only thing that comes out of your mouth is their name.

That decision has to be made before the moment, because there is no deciding anything inside the two seconds. There is only executing something already decided.

You have a decision available to you today that is not available on the day, and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds a decision in place for weeks. Proverbs 10:19 sets the wisdom in the refraining rather than in the reacting, and He does not need it renewed every morning.

The second half is what to do if the sentence starts anyway. Because it might, and it is important to know that it is not a lost cause when it does.

Stop mid sentence. Genuinely mid sentence. It will feel abrupt and slightly odd, and abrupt and slightly odd is far better than complete.

Then say their name, and let the silence sit.

You are able to stop halfway through, and it is written that the refraining is the wise thing rather than the finishing well. The Spirit of God is the one who catches a sentence in the middle, and He catches it in a woman who has already asked Him to.

And then the third thing, which is what to do with the silence.

Look at them. Do not fill it. The silence lasts about two seconds and then somebody says something and the room moves on, and the two seconds you have been dreading for years turn out to be shorter than the sentence would have been.

You have less to get through than the sentence takes to say, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes two seconds of silence do what no wording could. The written word counts the multitude of words as the place the harm gets in, and He does it every time.