I Have Not Told Them Yet

It has been a quiet month and nobody in this house knows.

You have not lied about it. You have simply not said the word, and when your husband asked how it was going you said fine, which is a true enough answer to a question about a day and a false one about a month.

And your reason is the best reason there is. If you tell them it has been quiet, they will hear the thing they have half believed for two years, which is that this does not hold. One quiet month becomes evidence in a case you have been arguing since you started.

So you have carried it on your own for four weeks in a house with three other people in it.

I am not going to tell you how to fill the month, because that would be strategy and there is none of it here. And I am not going to promise you next month is different, because nobody can. I am going to talk about what a burden is supposed to do.

Bear ye one another's burdens

There is a short instruction in Galatians about weight, and the mechanism in it is simple and physical.

Paul is writing about how people in a community carry things, and he gives an instruction that assumes the weight is shareable.

Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. (Galatians 6:2, King James Version)

You are living under an instruction that assumes the weight gets shared, and it has never once been designed to be carried alone. Galatians 6:2 puts the bearing of burdens between people and calls the sharing of it a fulfilling of Christ's own law, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to a kitchen counter with a calendar on it.

Notice that it goes both ways. One another's burdens. That means somebody in your house is under the same instruction about yours, and has been all month, and has not been able to keep it because nobody told them there was anything to keep.

And notice how high the bar is set. The sharing of a weight is named as the fulfilling of the law of Christ. That is not a suggestion about being nice, it is the thing the whole law is described as being fulfilled by.

You have people who were given something to carry with you, and the instruction has never once excluded you from it. The Spirit of God is the one who makes one short line about shared weight reach a woman standing at a counter with a cup going cold, and Galatians 6:2 puts the burden between people rather than inside one person.

What the silence is protecting

Let me say what the silence is actually protecting, because it is not them.

You are protecting the case. For two years you have been making an argument that this works, and a quiet month is a piece of evidence on the other side, and you cannot bear to hand it over. That is what the silence is for.

You were never on trial in this house, and a month has never once been evidence in a case. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman what her own silence has been defending, and the written word puts the bearing of burdens between people in Galatians 6:2.

And there is a thing about your household that you may not have considered. They can tell. Not the details, but the temperature. Your husband has known something is wrong for about three weeks, and because he does not know what, he has had to guess, and what a person guesses is always larger than the truth.

Your silence has not spared him anything. It has given him a vaguer and heavier version of the same thing.

You are able to hand the true size of it over, and giving it has never once been a burden on anybody. His Spirit is the one who makes one plain word sayable in a woman's own kitchen, and Galatians 6:2 makes the sharing of weight the fulfilling of a law rather than an imposition.

One word, then the work

So here is the exercise, and it is one word and not a conversation.

Say the word quiet out loud to one person at home. It has been a quiet month. That is the whole sentence and nothing has to follow it.

You are able to say one true word in your own house, and saying it has never once put your weight on anybody. Galatians 6:2 puts the burden between people, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes one word possible for a woman who has said fine for four weeks.

Do not build the case while you say it. Do not explain that this happens and that it always picks up, because that is a forecast and you do not know it, and because the explaining is what turns one sentence into a defense.

Then do one ordinary piece of the work that nobody has asked for yet. The dull thing, done today, not aimed at ending the quiet. The sentence at home and the hour at the table are the two halves of this.

You were never required to win an argument before you could be honest, and you are not required to now. The Spirit of God carries one plain word past the instinct to defend a case, and the written word calls the sharing of a burden the fulfilling of Christ's law in Galatians 6:2.