I Changed The Subject Again

It happened again on Saturday, and you heard yourself do it.

Somebody asked what you do. You started to answer. And then, about seven words in, you turned the whole thing sideways. You said something about how it is a funny story really. You asked them about their job instead. You made a remark about the food.

Whatever the exit was, you took it, and you took it before the sentence had finished.

And here is what makes it worse rather than better: you are good at it now. It is smooth. Nobody in that kitchen noticed anything at all. You are the only person in the world who knows that a question was asked and never answered.

I am not going to tell you to be bolder. Boldness is not what is missing here. What is missing is the end of a sentence, and that is a much smaller thing to find.

The man who answered with his own mouth

There is a conversation in Exodus where a man is given an assignment and answers by talking about his speech.

God has just told Moses what he is going to do. Moses does not argue with the assignment. He goes somewhere else entirely, and where he goes is his own voice.

And Moses said unto the LORD, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue. (Exodus 4:10, King James Version)

You are not disqualified by being bad at saying it, and you never were. Exodus 4:10 has a man state his own inadequacy at speech out loud to God himself, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that reach a man in a kitchen who keeps taking the exit seven words in.

Notice what God does not do. He does not tell Moses he is wrong about his own tongue. He does not say you are actually very articulate. He asks a question back, which is who made the mouth, and then He keeps the assignment exactly where it was.

That is the whole pattern, and it is worth sitting with. The deflection is not corrected and it is not punished. It is simply not accepted as a reason.

You have an assignment that does not depend on your skill at describing it, and it never once did. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps a thing in a man's hands while he is still explaining why he is the wrong man, and Exodus 4:10 shows the explanation being heard in full and then gently set aside.

What the exit is actually for

Let me say plainly what the change of subject is doing, because it is not modesty and it is not shyness.

It is a door you keep open. While the answer is unfinished, nobody can evaluate it. Nobody can ask the follow up question. Nobody can look slightly confused and then be polite about it. You got out of the room before any of that could happen, and you have done it so often that your body does it without consulting you.

You were protecting yourself from a reaction that has not happened yet, and you have never once had to. Exodus 4:10 records the objection and then leaves the man holding the thing anyway, and by His Spirit that is exactly how the next kitchen conversation can go.

And the cost is not what you think. The cost is not that people underestimate you, though they do. The cost is that you have now had this conversation nine hundred times without ever hearing yourself describe your own work to the end, and a man needs to hear that once in a while.

There is nobody else who can do it for you. Your wife can say it, and she does, and it does not count, because you were not the one who said it.

You have a voice available for this and it has never once needed to be impressive. His Spirit is the one who makes an unremarkable sentence possible in a loud room, and the written word has God answering a speech objection in Exodus 4:10 by pointing at the maker of the mouth rather than at the quality of it.

The sentence, and then nothing

So here is the whole technique, and it is not a technique.

Say the sentence. Then stop. Do not add the story, do not add the joke, do not hand the conversation back with a question of your own. Let the silence be theirs to fill.

I fit kitchens. I do deliveries for three pharmacies. I repair instruments. Whatever it is, said to the end, with a full stop on it.

You are able to let a sentence finish, and finishing it has never once been the same as boasting. Exodus 4:10 is a man talking about his own tongue and being kept in the assignment regardless, and the Holy Spirit is the one who turns that into two seconds of quiet in a kitchen.

The silence will feel long. It will be about a second and a half. Somebody will say oh, how did you get into that, and you will discover that the follow up question you have spent four years avoiding is friendly.

And if it is not friendly, that is information about them, and it still is not a verdict on the work.

You were never required to manage how other people receive it, and you are not required to now. The Spirit of God carries a plain word past the part of a man that is braced for impact, and Exodus 4:10 has the objection spoken and the commission unchanged.