He Explains It Better Than I Do

Somebody asked about your work on Sunday and your husband answered it.

He was good. He always is. He explained it better than you would have, he got the details right, he even said the part about how long it takes, and the person was genuinely interested and asked him a follow up question, which he also answered.

And you stood there and let it happen, with a tray in your hands, nodding at the correct moments about your own work.

You are not angry with him. That is the part nobody understands. He is not talking over you and he would stop in a second if you started. He has simply learned, over nine years, that you will not, and he fills the gap because somebody has to, and a silence in a kitchen doorway is awkward for everybody.

I am not going to tell you to speak up. You know how to speak and you do it all day. I am going to talk about one sentence, and about whose mouth it lives in.

Her own mouth, in the verse

There is a line in Proverbs 31 about a woman and her mouth, and it is almost always read as being about being nice.

Read it again with the first half in view, because the first half is the surprising bit.

She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness. (Proverbs 31:26, King James Version)

You have a mouth given to you for this, and using it has never once been the same as pushing in. Proverbs 31:26 has her open her own mouth rather than being spoken for, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a kitchen doorway with a tray in somebody's hands.

She opens it. Not her husband on her behalf. Not a friend who is better at talking. Her own mouth, and what comes out of it is wisdom, and the kindness in it is the manner rather than the substitute for saying anything.

That whole chapter is full of a woman doing things. She buys, she makes, she sells, she plants, she gets up early. And in the middle of all the doing there is one verse about speech, and in it she is the one speaking.

You are the one with the wisdom about this work, and the wisdom has never once needed a translator. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a verse about an industrious woman's speech reach somebody standing silently beside her own subject, and Proverbs 31:26 has her open her mouth with nobody opening it for her.

Why you hand it over

Let me say what I think is happening, because it is not shyness and it is not laziness.

Handing the sentence to him is safe. If he says it and it lands badly, that is him and not you. If the other person looks unimpressed, it happened to his words. You have never once had to stand in a room and be the one who said it, which means you have also never once found out that you could.

You were outsourcing the risk, and you have never once needed anybody to carry it for you. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman what her own silence has been arranging, and the written word has her opening her own mouth with wisdom in Proverbs 31:26.

And there is a cost you have probably felt and not named. When he describes it, it becomes his version. It is accurate, but the thing he leaves out is always the same thing: why you do it. He cannot say that part, because it is not his.

So the people around you know what you make and have never once heard why. Nine years of that.

You have the only account of this that includes why, and it has never once been available from anybody else. His Spirit is the one who puts a woman back in charge of her own sentence, and Proverbs 31:26 has wisdom coming out of her own mouth rather than out of a kinder arrangement.

Take one sentence back

So here is the exercise, and it is one sentence and it is not a speech.

Answer it yourself. When somebody asks, and you are standing there, speak first. One sentence. I make window boxes and planters. I do alterations for three shops. I run a small bookkeeping practice from home.

You are able to answer a question about yourself, and answering it has never once been showing off. Proverbs 31:26 has her open her own mouth and not wait to be introduced, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes one plain sentence possible for a woman who has let somebody else say it for nine years.

He will be surprised. He may look at you. He will not mind, and if you want to, tell him afterwards what you are doing and why, and he will help you by staying quiet for two seconds the next time.

And then let him add things. That is not a failure. He is allowed to be proud of you out loud. The point is only that the first sentence came from you.

You were never being rescued in those conversations, and you do not need to be. The Spirit of God carries a plain word past the habit of standing half a step back, and Proverbs 31:26 has her speech treated as one of the good works of a working woman rather than as a risk she takes.