They Wanted Me To Settle It

Both of them came in the same fortnight, which she is fairly sure was not coordinated and might as well have been.

The first one on a Tuesday, with a folder. An actual folder. She sat at the table for two hours and laid it all out in order, and it was, she has to admit, a good case, and there were three things in it she had not known.

The second one the following Sunday, without a folder, but with eleven years of it in her head and no need for paper, and she cried twice, and there were four things in that one she had not known either.

They are sisters. She has known both of them since they were small. She christened one of their children.

And each of them, at the end, said a version of the same sentence. You know what she is like. You have always been able to see straight.

Neither of them asked her to decide. That is the thing she keeps coming back to. Nobody in either conversation used the word judge, or asked her for a ruling, or set out terms.

And yet she has been awake at two in the morning three times since, working out what is fair.

She has actually drafted it. Not on paper, but in her head, in a form she could deliver: the part where the first one is right, the part where the second one is right, the thing they have both missed, and the reasonable way forward that any sensible person would accept.

It is a good draft. That is not the point and she knows it is not the point, and at about half past two on Thursday she caught herself polishing a sentence and felt something cold go through her.

Nobody gave her this. She picked it up off the table.

Who made me a judge over you

Sit down with your cup, because there is a moment in Luke where somebody tries to hand Jesus exactly this, and His answer is one of the shortest and least sentimental things He ever says.

A man in a crowd shouts out, in the middle of something else entirely, and asks Him to make his brother divide the inheritance.

It is not an unreasonable request. It is a real dispute, there is a genuine wrong in it somewhere, and the man asking has come to the one person he believes can see straight.

And He said unto him, Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you?Luke 12:14

Who made me a judge.

He does not take the folder. He does not weigh it, He does not ask for the other brother's side, and He does not offer a reasonable way forward that any sensible person would accept.

He asks who appointed Him, and the answer is nobody did, and the answer is enough.

Hear this at your own table. You are not abandoning either of them, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture has the Son of God declining a bench in a real dispute between real brothers, and the Holy Spirit did not appoint you to that seat between two women you have loved since they were small.

Now let me name what actually happened, because it was not a request and you have been treating it as one.

Both of them told you that you can see straight. That is not an appointment. That is love, and flattery, and a hope, in one sentence, and neither of them has any idea what they have handed you, and neither of them would want the two in the morning if they knew about it.

You accepted a post nobody offered, and you accepted it because you are competent and because you love them and because when somebody says you can see straight, the temptation is not to be praised. It is to be useful.

Hear this too, and let it come off. You are not failing them by declining, and Scripture is what says so. What is written has the Lord Himself refusing to divide an inheritance between brothers, and the Spirit of God is not short of ways to reach two sisters, and He has never once required a woman at a kitchen table to be the mechanism.

And now the thing that will actually cost you something, because it is the whole difference between declining and disappearing.

You have to say it out loud, to each of them, once.

Not by silence. Not by becoming vague and hard to get hold of, which is how kind people usually do this and which reads as a verdict anyway, and always reads as a verdict for the other one.

Say it plainly. I love you both and I am not going to decide this. And then, immediately, in the same breath, ask her to stay for her tea.

Because that is the sentence that separates a woman who has stepped off a bench from a woman who has stepped away from a family, and the difference between those two is about four seconds and one invitation.