The One I Think I Saw

Ruby was thirty-one and it was in a kitchen and she has never once been able to decide what it was.

She is not going to describe it. It concerned somebody who is dead now and it is not hers to lay out, and in any case the details are not the difficulty.

The difficulty is that it sits exactly on a line.

If you told her it was nothing, she could construct the ordinary account, and the ordinary account holds. It requires a coincidence, but coincidences happen constantly and a woman who lives long enough sees a great many of them.

And if you told her it was God, she could construct that account too, and it also holds, and it explains the timing better than the ordinary one does.

Forty-three years of being unable to choose.

It comes back every few years. Not troubling, exactly. It arrives, generally when something reminds her, and she goes round the same circuit for about a week, and she reaches the same place, which is no place, and then it goes quiet again for four or five years.

She is seventy-four. She has never told anybody about it, and part of the reason is that she does not know which kind of story she would be telling.

You may have one of your own.

Maybe you also have a thing that will not settle. Maybe you have also gone round the circuit. And maybe the reason you have never told it is not modesty but that you cannot work out what genre it belongs to.

The one that happened in two stages

There is a healing in Mark that people find awkward, and it is exactly the one for you.

And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought. And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking. After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly.Mark 8:23-25

Stop at the middle. I see men as trees, walking.

The man is asked whether he sees anything and he gives an honest, partial, slightly ridiculous answer. He does not say yes. He does not say no. He reports exactly what he has, which is something that is neither sight nor blindness and does not fit either category.

And nobody in that passage rebukes him for it. Nobody tells him to make up his mind, and nobody suggests his uncertain answer indicates a problem with his faith. Jesus simply puts His hands on him again.

Which means Scripture has a category for a report that cannot be classified, and it puts one in the middle of a healing narrative and preserves it rather than tidying it away.

And an unclassifiable report is allowed to stand as what you actually have. The written word preserves a partial answer in the middle of a healing and never once corrects it, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my paragraph who makes that reach a woman who has gone round a circuit for forty-three years.

And nothing about you is under review for not knowing. The word records the honest half-answer approvingly enough to keep it, and the Spirit bears witness with your spirit rather than requiring a classification.

What settling it would actually give you

Now a practical question, and it is the one that ends the circuit rather than completing it.

Suppose you could settle it tomorrow. Suppose somebody handed you a certain answer, one way or the other.

What would be different?

If it were ordinary, you would have a coincidence you had wondered about for forty-three years, and nothing about your life would change, and God would be no different than He is.

If it were God, you would have one instance, forty-three years old, concerning somebody who has died, and nothing about your life would change either, because you have already lived the whole of it since without leaning on it.

The answer, either way, changes nothing. Which is worth knowing about a question that has taken a week of your attention every four or five years since you were thirty-one.

And you are not required to resolve it in order to be settled. The word says be careful for nothing, but in every thing by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known unto God, and the Spirit is the one who takes a thing off a woman without first sorting it into a category.

And He still does this whatever that kitchen was. The word puts the doing in Him rather than in your ability to identify instances of it, and the Spirit is the one who makes that hold independent of one unsettled memory.

Why you have never told it

One more thing, and it is kinder than the reason you have given yourself.

You have not told it because you do not know what genre it is, and both available genres carry a cost you did not want to pay.

Told as a miracle, it claims something you cannot support, and you are not a woman who claims things.

Told as a coincidence, it dismisses something you are not sure should be dismissed, and that felt like a small disloyalty.

So you have said nothing for forty-three years, which was the only option that did not require you to overstate or understate, and that is not cowardice. That is accuracy in a situation where the available forms of speech were both inaccurate.

There is a third form and it is simply the middle one. I saw something once and I have never known what it was. That is exactly true, it claims nothing, it dismisses nothing, and it is the same shape as I see men as trees, walking.

And you are able to say the true middle thing. The word preserves a report that is neither yes nor no and treats it as a legitimate answer, and the Spirit is the one who makes an honest partial sentence sayable at last.