The Reason I Gave Instead

Ross said he had an early start and it was true and it was not the reason.

He had been in that room about eleven minutes. Nothing had happened. Nobody had said anything wrong, there was no atmosphere anybody else seemed to notice, and two people he likes a great deal were there and were enjoying themselves.

And something in him would not sit down.

He tried. He got a drink. He talked to a man about a car. And the whole time there was a thing in him with no name and no evidence attached, and by minute eleven he knew he was going to leave, and at minute nineteen he said the thing about the early start and got his coat.

He did have an early start. That is what has made it hard to file. He did not lie.

But if you had put him under oath he would have to say that the early start was not why he left, and that he does not know why he left, and that he has thought about it perhaps forty times in the fourteen months since.

Nothing has come out about that evening. No scandal, no revelation, nothing at all. Everybody who was there would describe it as a pleasant night.

Which leaves Ross with two possibilities he cannot choose between. Either he perceived something real and nothing has surfaced yet and may never. Or there was nothing, and what he experienced was a mood, and he has spent fourteen months treating his own mood as a message.

He is fifty-one and he has told nobody, because the sentence I left a party and I do not know why is not a sentence a man can say twice.

You may know that coat.

Maybe you also gave a true reason that was not the reason. Maybe nothing has ever come out. And maybe you have been unable to decide, since, what you actually are.

The psalm asks rather than performs

There is a prayer at the end of Psalm 139 that people quote as an act of humility, and the structure of it is the thing for you.

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.Psalm 139:23-24

Read who is doing the work in every clause.

Search me. Know my heart. Try me. Know my thoughts. See if there be. Lead me.

Six verbs, all imperative, all addressed to God. The psalmist does not search himself and report the findings. He asks to be searched, which is a completely different activity, and then stops.

And notice that this is the same psalm that opens with thou hast searched me, and known me. It begins with God having done it and ends with the writer asking Him to do it again. The one thing the psalm never does is have the man do it himself.

Which is exactly the fourteen months you have spent. You have been running an internal investigation into your own eleven minutes, trying to establish whether you are a man who perceives or a man with moods, and the psalm hands that whole question upward and asks rather than concludes.

And you are not required to establish what you are. The written word puts six imperatives in a row and every one of them is addressed to God, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my paragraph who makes that reach a man who has replayed a party forty times.

And you are able to ask instead of concluding. The word gives the searching to Him and stops, and the Spirit bears witness with your spirit rather than issuing a finding on a Tuesday evening in your own head.

Leaving was not the failure

Let me say something about what you actually did, because I think you have been quietly counting it as a small dishonesty and it was not.

You perceived something you could not name, and you removed yourself, and you did it without saying a word about anybody.

That is close to the perfect handling.

Consider the alternatives. You could have stayed and been odd, which helps nobody. You could have said something, and what would you have said? There was no content. A man who announces an unnameable unease in a room where two people he loves are enjoying themselves has done real harm with nothing in his hands.

Or you could have done what you did, which was to leave quietly with a true reason that was not the whole reason.

And notice that everybody in that room still has an unspoiled memory of a pleasant evening. That is not nothing. That is what your discretion bought them.

And you handled it and the handling was the discretion rather than the naming. The word says a fool uttereth all his mind: but a wise man keepeth it in till afterwards, and the Spirit is the one who makes that a commendation rather than a description of cowardice.

And nothing about you is under review for the early start. 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 prosecuting a sentence that was literally true.

The question you cannot answer

Now the two possibilities, and I am not going to pick one for you, because I cannot and neither can anybody.

Perception or mood. You have been trying to decide for fourteen months.

Here is what I would put to you: the handling was correct under both.

If it was perception, you removed yourself and said nothing, which is what the gift is for. If it was a mood, you left a party early with a true excuse, which is a thing adults do about twice a year and which harmed nobody at all.

There is no version of that evening where the answer to the question changes what you should have done. Which means the question, however interesting, is not load-bearing, and fourteen months of carrying it has been fourteen months of carrying something that does not affect anything.

And you are not obliged to classify it before you can put it down. 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 man without first sorting it.