It happened at a table and it took about four seconds and she has thought about it every day since.
Somebody said a thing about her. Out loud, in front of two other people, unprompted, and it was not a compliment about a jumper. It was about who she is, and it was specific, and it was true, and the person saying it had clearly thought about it before saying it.
She heard herself answer before she had decided to.
She said: well, that is only because you have not seen me on a Tuesday. And everybody laughed, because it was funny, and the conversation went somewhere else within about ten seconds, and it never came back.
She has run it since. Dozens of times. And what she keeps arriving at is that she did not simply deflect it, she disposed of it. There was a sentence in the air, it was headed for her, and something in her put a hand up and knocked it sideways before it could land, at speed, with a joke, expertly.
She is forty four and she has been doing that since she was about nine.
Here is what she worked out at three in the morning last Tuesday, which is the sort of thing that arrives at three in the morning.
She has an entire apparatus for correction. She can receive criticism well, and she does, and people have said so. She takes it, she works on it, she comes back.
She has nothing at all for the other thing. No mechanism, no habit, no place to put it. Somebody says a good true sentence about her and there is nowhere in her for it to go, so it gets batted away by the only reflex available.
He will joy over thee with singing
Sit down at the table again, because there is a verse in a very short prophet that says something about God that most people cannot get through without doing what you did at that table.
The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; He will save, He will rejoice over thee with joy; He will rest in His love, He will joy over thee with singing.Zephaniah 3:17
Rejoice over thee with joy. Joy over thee with singing.
Now notice what is not in that sentence. There is no correction in it. There is no note, no adjustment, nothing about what needs work, and no reference at all to the Tuesdays.
And notice what He is doing. Singing. Not assessing, not tolerating, not accepting despite. Singing, which is what people do when they cannot contain something and are not being efficient.
Hear this at the table. You are not being flattered, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture puts God in the middle of His people singing over them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who breathed that sentence, and He has been singing over a woman who has had nowhere to put it since she was nine.
Now let me be careful about the apparatus, because it is not a defect and it has served you.
Being able to take correction is rare and it is valuable and a great many people cannot do it at all. You built that, probably early, probably because you had to, and it has made you good at things.
The trouble is that a person only ever builds what they need. Nine year olds do not construct a mechanism for receiving good sentences if no good sentences are arriving, and so the space where that mechanism goes has stayed empty, and the correction apparatus has quietly expanded into it.
That is why the joke arrives in under two seconds. It is not modesty. It is the only equipment in the room.
Hear this too, and let it get in. You are not too much for a good word, and Scripture is what says so. What is written has God in the midst of His people joying over them with singing, and the Spirit of God has never once handed you a note where He meant a song.
And now the practical piece, and it is deliberately small, because a reflex from the age of nine does not go because a woman of forty four decides it should.
You do not have to believe the sentence. You do not have to feel anything. You do not have to agree with it or find a way to hold it or work out whether it is deserved.
You have to not bat it away for three seconds.
That is all. Somebody says the good true thing. You say thank you. And then you close your mouth and let three seconds go past.
Three seconds is longer than you think and it is where the sentence lands.
So the next time somebody says a good true thing about you, you do two things and neither of them is believing it.
You say thank you.
And then you shut your mouth for three seconds.
That is the whole of it, and it will be one of the harder things you do this month, and you will feel every one of the three seconds like a room with nothing in it.
Something will want to fill it. There will be a joke available, an excellent one, on time, and it will be funny.
Do not use it.
Three seconds, and then the conversation can go wherever it goes.
The written word says God is in the midst of you and joys over you with singing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who breathed that line and who has been singing over a woman with nowhere to put it since she was nine, and He has not once handed you a note where He meant a song.
The apparatus for correction stays. Nobody is taking it off you and it has served you well.
You are simply building the other one, three seconds at a time, at forty four, which is not late, and the written word is the material and the Holy Spirit is the builder.
Declare this over yourself
Say these at your own table on your own. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the Holy Spirit is the one who breathed that line about singing according to the written word, so the standing you speak from was never built out of what you can accept. Whether the three seconds get easier this year or take another decade, the outcome is His to decide, and it is never a measure of a woman who learned to duck at nine.
- Reflex that catches every good word before it lands, you are not protecting me. Scripture says the Lord my God in the midst of me is mighty and joys over me with singing, and there is no correction anywhere in that sentence.
- Nine year old apparatus that only ever built a place for notes, get off this table, in the name of Jesus. Scripture puts God in the midst of His people singing rather than assessing, and the Spirit of God has never handed me a note where He meant a song.
- Lord, You are the God who rejoices over me with singing and rests in His love, and Your Spirit breathed that line for a woman with nowhere to put it. I am saying thank you and then keeping my mouth shut for three seconds, and the joke stays in my pocket.
Zephaniah 3:17
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