Waiting On Them To Say It

You are waiting for one of them to say it, and you have noticed that when they do, it does not last.

That is the part that has started to worry you. Your sister said something genuinely lovely in March, about how she does not know how you do it, and you carried that for about nine days. Nine days. Then it wore off and you were back where you started, waiting for the next one.

So now there are two problems. The first is that they mostly do not say it. The second, which is worse, is that when they do, it does not hold.

And you cannot ask. Asking would make it worthless, and you know that, so you wait, and you have been waiting for about three years.

I am not going to tell you to stop caring what your family think, which is not a thing anybody can do on command. I am going to show you a question Jesus asks, and it is a question rather than a rebuke.

How can ye believe, taking your worth from one another

There is a question in John's gospel that is asked of religious people, and it is about where their sense of worth was coming from.

It is not a telling off. It is a diagnostic question, and it names a mechanism.

How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only? (John 5:44, King James Version)

You have a source that does not run dry, and it has never once depended on anybody in your family. John 5:44 names the receiving of approval from one another as the thing that makes believing difficult, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to a kitchen window with a calendar on the wall beside it.

Notice that it is framed as a practical difficulty rather than a sin. How can you believe, He asks, as though the two things genuinely get in each other's way.

And notice the word only, at the end. The approval that comes from God alone. Not God as well as your sister. God as the source, with the rest arriving or not arriving as it pleases.

You are able to draw from somewhere that does not wear off in nine days, and it has never once required anybody's permission. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a question asked in a temple court reach a woman standing at her own sink, and John 5:44 names the mechanism rather than scolding the people in it.

Why nine days

Let me say why your sister's lovely sentence only lasted nine days, because the reason is the whole point.

Approval from people is a cup and not a well. It holds a measure and then it is empty, and the only way to refill it is to go back to a person, which is why you have been watching faces at family gatherings for three years.

You were drinking from a cup and not a well, and a cup has never once been able to hold three years. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman why a kind sentence wore off, and the written word sets the approval of one another against the approval that comes from God only in John 5:44.

And there is a second thing that is harder to see. Waiting for them has quietly made them the judges. You did not appoint them and they did not apply, and they have no idea they are holding that position, and they would be baffled to be told.

Your sister is not a court. She is a woman who said a nice thing in March.

You have never once been on trial in that family, and nobody there was ever qualified to rule. His Spirit is the one who takes a bench out from under people who never asked to sit on it, and John 5:44 puts the honor that matters in God's gift rather than in anybody's verdict.

Say it where nobody is

So here is the exercise, and the condition is that there is no audience.

Say one true sentence about the work out loud with nobody there. Not to a friend, not in a message, not at a gathering. Alone, in this kitchen, in your own voice.

You are able to say a true thing without a witness, and it has never once needed one to be true. John 5:44 points to the honor that comes from God only, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a plain sentence possible for a woman who has waited three years for somebody else's.

It will feel pointless. That is expected, because you have trained yourself for three years to believe that a sentence only counts when another person says it. The pointlessness is the habit talking.

Then go and do an hour of the work. Not to prove anything and not to show anybody. An hour, today, because the work is real and it was real all along.

You were never required to be told before you could work, and you are not required to now. The Spirit of God carries a woman past the habit of watching faces, and the written word names the honor that comes from God only in John 5:44 and calls the other kind a hindrance.