I Am Not The One Who Does The Talking

In Malu's family the talking was assigned, and it was not assigned to him.

His uncle did it. At every gathering, every funeral, every time anything had to be said to anybody outside the family, and the man was good at it, genuinely good, and nobody resented him and nobody ever questioned the arrangement.

Malu was the one who set up and cleaned up and drove people and stood at the back. And that was fine, and it is still fine, and he is not writing to complain about his uncle.

What he cannot get past is one afternoon when he was about fifteen.

There was something being decided and Malu started to say a thing, and his uncle put a hand on his shoulder, kindly, and finished the sentence for him. Better than he was going to finish it. Everybody moved on within about four seconds and nobody in that room has ever thought about it again.

And afterwards, walking back, his uncle said, meaning it as encouragement: you are not a talker, and that is all right, we need the ones who are not.

He is fifty now. His uncle has been dead six years.

And at every table, in every room, whenever there is a gap where something should be said, some part of him still checks first whether the person who talks is present, and if there is anybody at all who might be it, he waits.

There is a young woman in the family now, his brother's daughter, going through something that nobody has named out loud. Malu can see exactly what she needs to hear and he could say it in three sentences.

He has been carrying it since March.

You may know that assignment.

Maybe somebody in your family was the speaker. Maybe you were told kindly, and young, that you were not. And maybe you have deferred so long that the deferring happens before you notice it.

The objection and the answer

The first thing Jeremiah says, when he is given this, is your exact sentence. Not a version of it. Your sentence.

Then said I, Ah, Lord GOD! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child.Jeremiah 1:6

I cannot speak.

That is the objection. Not I do not want to, not I am afraid, not choose somebody holier. It is a claim about capacity, made plainly, as a simple statement of fact about himself, which is what it also is for you.

And what he gets back is one sentence, in the next verse, and it does not argue with him about his abilities at all.

But the LORD said unto me, Say not, I am a child.

Look at what is being corrected there. Not his competence. His sentence. God does not tell him he is better at this than he thinks. He tells him to stop saying the thing he has been saying about himself.

Which means the report you have been repeating since you were fifteen is exactly the report the man in Jeremiah 1 was told to stop filing, and it was not answered with an argument because it was never going to be won by one.

And what needs to stop is the sentence rather than the doubt. The written word puts I cannot speak in the mouth of the man being sent, and answers it with say not, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my paragraph who brings that to a man who has waited at every table since he was fifteen.

And He speaks and you can carry it plainly. The word says the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal, and the Spirit is the one who supplies it rather than checking who in the room was assigned the talking.

Naming what actually happened

Now the part I am not going to soften, because you have spent thirty-five years being reasonable about it.

Your uncle put a hand on your shoulder and took a sentence out of your mouth in front of your family, and then told you on the walk home what kind of person that made you.

He meant it well. All of that is true. He was a good man and it was said as comfort and the family needed him and he served them for decades.

And it was still a wound. Both of those are the case at once, and thirty-five years of holding only the first half is why the second half has never healed.

You were fifteen. You were told, by the most authoritative voice in your world, at the exact moment you had tried, that this is not what you are. A boy does not survive that with his speech intact, and the fact that nobody intended harm does not make the harm not have happened.

That is what has been operating at every table since. Not modesty. An injury, delivered kindly, that has never once been named out loud.

And you were wounded rather than correctly assessed. The word says a broken spirit drieth the bones, and the Spirit is the one who lets a thing be an injury even when the person who caused it loved you.

And nothing about you is under review for thirty-five years of waiting. The word says there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, and the Spirit supplies that to a man who has been carrying something for his niece since March.

And nobody is asking you to take his place

Let me be plain, because you have already pictured yourself standing up in front of the family and the answer is no.

Nothing here makes you the speaker. That seat is not being offered and you do not want it, and your uncle can keep it, and the family can go on remembering him as the one who did the talking, because he was.

And nothing here hands you a future to hand your niece. Not what will happen to her, not her health, not anything about how this turns out, because that is not this and it never was, and the fence around this exists exactly so that a man can say something to a young woman without the stakes being unbearable.

What is on offer is three sentences at the end of a table, to one person, about who she already is.

And you are permitted to speak without being the speaker. The word answers the capacity objection by retiring the sentence rather than by handing anybody a platform, and the Spirit is the one who makes that a permission rather than a promotion into a dead man's seat.