She Was Carrying Something I Did Not Know About

Her face did something and you have been reading it for a year.

That is the whole of it. She opened it, and something crossed her face, and she said thank you, and it was fine, and everybody carried on.

And you have gone over that expression enough times to have it word perfect, except that it was not words. It was about a second and a quarter of a face, and you have built a year on it.

And the reading you settled on was: she did not like it, and more than that, she thought less of me for choosing it.

Here is the thing you have not considered, and it took somebody else to say it to me before I ever considered it either.

You do not know what was in her day.

You know what was in yours. You know how long you thought about it and what you hoped and how you felt walking in. You have no information at all about the twenty four hours she had been having when she opened it.

There is a verse about a record of a person's griefs that nobody else has access to, and it changes what a face is.

Put thou my tears into thy bottle

Here it is.

Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book? (Psalm 56:8, King James Version)

Thou tellest my wanderings. Tellest there means counts. God keeps a count of the wandering, the going back and forth, the restless part of a person's life that has no shape from outside.

That is an account being kept of things nobody else can see.

You have been reading somebody whose real account is kept somewhere you have no access to, and the Holy Spirit is the one who wrote a private ledger into that verse. Psalm 56:8 says God tells the wanderings rather than that anybody else can read them, and the privacy is the whole point of it.

Now the middle, which is one of the tenderest pictures in the book.

Put thou my tears into thy bottle. Every tear collected and kept, deliberately, by somebody who considered them worth keeping.

That is a person's grief being treated as valuable and being held somewhere entirely out of public view.

You are standing next to somebody whose tears are in a bottle you cannot see, and it is written that they go into His bottle rather than onto anybody's face where it could be read. The Spirit of God is the one who does that collecting, and He does it for people who never say a word about it.

And the question at the end is not rhetorical decoration.

Are they not in thy book. There is a book. There is a record. And the whole force of the psalm is that the record exists and is complete and is held by God and by nobody else at all.

You have been trying to read a book that is not yours to open, and the Holy Spirit is the one holding it. The written word puts the whole account in His hands rather than in anybody's expression, and He has never once handed a man a page and asked him to interpret it.

The face was a page you were not shown

Now let me put your second and a quarter next to that.

Whatever crossed her face that afternoon came out of a day, and a week, and a year that you know almost nothing about.

She may have had a conversation that morning. She may have been three days into something she has told nobody. She may have been tired in the specific way that makes everything land oddly. She may have been thinking about somebody who was not in the room.

You have been reading a single frame of something long, and it is written that the wanderings are told by God rather than shown to the people standing nearby. The Spirit of God is the one who has the rest of that day, and there is a great deal of it and none of it was about you.

And here is the specific thing your year has done.

It has taken a face, which is a report on a whole person in a whole moment, and read it as a review of one object and one man.

That is a very narrow reading of a very wide thing, and it has never once been checked against anything.

You have been running one interpretation with no way to test it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a man where the limits of his information are. His word keeps the real account in a book you were not given, and knowing the limits is most of the relief.

And there is a plain point about the timing, which is worth saying.

The day a person receives something is not chosen by them. Whatever was already in that day was in it before you arrived, and it stayed in it while they opened whatever they opened.

That is not a fault in anybody. It is what days are.

You were arriving in the middle of a day rather than at the start of one, and it is written that the tears go into His bottle rather than being explained to the room. The Spirit of God is the one who sees the whole of a day, and He was in the whole of that one.

Ask her how she is

So here is what to do, and it has nothing whatever to do with the thing you gave her.

Ask her how she is. Properly, once, this week, in a moment where there is time for a real answer.

Not how are you as a greeting. Something with edges. How has this year actually been. What has been the hardest part of it.

You are able to ask about the day rather than about the object, and the Holy Spirit is the one who opens a person with a question like that. Psalm 56:8 puts the account of a person's wandering in God's hands rather than in a face, and He opens them at a kitchen table more often than anywhere else.

And do not mention what you gave her. At all. Ever.

Do not use the question as a way in to it. Do not steer toward it. If she mentions it, say something warm and let it pass, and go back to her.

You have a conversation available that is entirely about her, and it is written that the tears are collected rather than that the giver is graded. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps a man from turning somebody else's year into an inquiry about himself.

And expect to find out something.

Usually there is something. A year is long and most people are carrying at least one thing they have not said out loud, and a man who asks properly and then goes quiet usually gets told.

And when you hear it, whatever it is, you will understand about a second and a quarter of a face very differently.

You are about to be given a page you were never handed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who arranges for a man to hear the thing that reframes a whole year. Scripture says the wanderings are told and the tears are kept rather than that they stay hidden forever, and He arranges it in ordinary conversations.