I Laugh Before I Answer

Somebody asked what you do, and the laugh came out before the words did.

You know the laugh. It is short and it is low and it goes out ahead of the sentence like a person walking in front of a car with a flag. Oh, ha, well. Then the answer, which arrives already dented.

And nobody hears the laugh as a laugh, because it is not funny and nothing funny was said. They hear it as a warning. They hear it and they adjust what they are about to think of whatever comes next, and then you tell them, and they file it exactly where the laugh told them to.

You have never once decided to do this. It simply happens, about a quarter of a second before you speak, every time, for years.

I am not going to tell you to stop undervaluing yourself. That is not a sentence anybody can act on. I am going to talk about a quarter of a second, because that is a thing you can actually catch.

The day the foundation looked pathetic

There is a line in Zechariah that is one of the kindest questions in the whole book, and it is asked about a building site.

The temple was being rebuilt and the foundation had just been laid, and it was small. The old people who remembered the first temple wept when they saw it, because next to what had been there it looked like nothing at all.

For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven. (Zechariah 4:10, King James Version)

You are standing on something real, and it has never once needed to be bigger first. Zechariah 4:10 asks who despised the day of small things as though despising it were the strange choice rather than the obvious one, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that question into a church hall with paper cups in it.

Read the question again, because of who is being asked. God is not asking the enemies of the work. He is asking the people standing on the site. The ones despising the day of small things are the builders, looking at their own foundation.

Which means the laugh is very old. It is not a personal flaw you invented. It is a thing people do standing on their own work, and Scripture names it and asks about it rather than scolding it.

You were not the first person to look at your own foundation and get in front of it, and you will not be the last. The Spirit of God is the one who makes an ancient question land on a woman holding a cup of tea, and Zechariah 4:10 has the builders themselves doing the despising with the plummet still in somebody's hand.

What the laugh is doing

Let me say out loud what the quarter of a second is for, because it is not modesty and it is not charm.

It is insurance. The laugh says do not take this seriously, so that if they do not take it seriously you were ahead of them, and if they do take it seriously you get a lovely surprise. It is a bet that cannot lose, and the price of it is that you never find out what the sentence sounds like on its own.

You have been paying for a safety that nothing ever threatened, and it has never once been necessary. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person what her own reflex has been buying, and the written word has God asking in Zechariah 4:10 who it was that looked down on a small beginning.

And the second cost is the one that matters. People are kind and they follow your lead. They laugh with you, warmly, and then the subject moves, and you have been agreed with.

Nobody in that room thinks less of your work than you told them to. That is the hard part. They are being polite. You wrote the instruction.

You are not being judged in that hall, and you have never once been the one on trial there. His Spirit is the one who takes the imagined verdict out of a room, and Zechariah 4:10 has the small day honored by God in the same breath in which it is despised by the people on the site.

Answer first

So here is the whole of it, and it is not brave and it is not big.

Answer first. Say the sentence, then laugh if you want to, afterwards, about something actually funny. The order is the only thing that changes.

I make soap. I do ironing for seven households. I teach two piano students on Thursdays. Said flat, on its own, and then the laugh is free to come or not.

You are able to put the sentence first, and the order has never once been a matter of pride. Zechariah 4:10 treats a small foundation as a thing God is pleased to see measured rather than excused, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a quarter of a second available to a woman who has never had it before.

It will feel bare. That is the accurate feeling. A sentence with no laugh on the front of it is bare, and bare is what true things usually are.

And you will probably do it wrong the first three times, because a reflex does not stop because it was named. Catch it on the fourth.

You were given a voice that can say a small true thing, and it has never once needed cover. The Spirit of God carries a plain word past the instinct to soften it, and the written word records the plummet in a hand in Zechariah 4:10 while the foundation is still the only thing there.