I Am Afraid Of What They Will Say

You know the exact words.

Not the general tone. The words. You could write them down tonight and be right within about four of them, because she has said versions of them before and they arrive with the same construction every time.

And that is why the day is still the size it is.

Everything else is settled. You know what you can manage this year and you know what you cannot, and if it were only about the work you would have made the change in September and thought no more about it.

But she will say the thing. And then the whole afternoon will have that in it, and two other people will hear it and side with her without meaning to take sides, and you will spend December carrying a remark.

Let me put a question in front of you before we go further, and it is not rhetorical.

How many people are you actually building this day around?

You have probably told yourself it is the family. But when you look at the plan honestly, most of it is not for the family at all. There are two or three items in there that exist entirely and specifically so that one person cannot say the thing.

Do I seek to please men

There is a question Paul asks about his own motives that is far sharper than it usually sounds.

For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. (Galatians 1:10, King James Version)

He is not asking whether it is nice to be liked. He is asking a structural question about who a person is actually working for, and he treats the answer as decisive.

And notice that he does not describe pleasing men as a small weakness or a bit of vanity. He puts it in direct competition with something else. Two employers, one person, and a choice about which one sets the work.

That is a much more useful frame than being told not to care what people think, which nobody has ever managed to do by instruction.

You have been working for somebody and it is worth knowing who, and it is written into Galatians 1:10 as a question about employment rather than about vanity. The written word makes it structural, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman ask the question honestly rather than defensively.

And note the tense in the middle of it. If I yet pleased men.

You are able to have been doing this for years and still ask the question now, and Galatians 1:10 has a man examining his own current arrangement out loud. Scripture keeps the question in the present rather than in a verdict about the past, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a woman working out who her plan is addressed to.

What she can actually do

Now let me be practical, because the fear is not irrational and I am not going to treat it as though it were.

She will say the thing. I am not going to promise you she does not. That would be a foolish promise from somebody who has never met her.

So let us cost it accurately rather than vaguely, because a vague fear is always larger than an accurate one.

What she can actually do is: make a remark, in front of some people, that lands for about eight seconds and is then followed by somebody changing the subject. That is the whole of her power in that room. She cannot make you do it. She cannot undo the decision. She cannot make the others agree with her, though one may nod. Eight seconds, and a remark you will carry for three weeks because you will replay it. The replaying is the expensive part and the replaying is yours.

You have been paying three weeks for eight seconds, and the written word puts the whole matter in terms of who a person is answering to. Galatians 1:10 asks the structural question plainly, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a woman costs a fear accurately for the first time.

And here is what the two or three items in your plan are actually buying. Not peace. Not a good day. They are buying the absence of eight seconds, and they are costing you a great deal of work and a certain amount of yourself.

You were never being fairly charged for that silence, and Scripture puts pleasing men in direct competition with the other employer rather than beside it. Galatians 1:10 makes it one or the other, and the Spirit of God is the one who shows a woman the actual price of the items she cannot explain.

Say who it is for

So here is the assignment, and it is not a decision about the day.

Say out loud whose approval the plan is built around, and name it to God.

Not to her. Not to the family. Out loud, in a room by yourself: three of the things I am doing this year are so that my mother in law cannot say the thing.

You are able to name whose approval the plan is addressed to, and it has never once required you to change one item on it tonight. Galatians 1:10 asks the question in the open, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman saying an uncomfortable true sentence to an empty room.

And notice what I have not asked you to do. I have not asked you to take those items off. That may come and it may not, and it is not tonight's work and it should not be decided in the mood that follows an honest sentence.

Tonight is only the naming. Because an item whose purpose is known is a completely different object from an item that has been passing itself off as being for the family.

Naming it does not remove it. What it does is stop you being confused about your own plan, and a woman who is not confused about her own plan can make a decision about it later on, calmly, in her own time.

You are ending a confusion rather than making a decision, and the written word never once asks a person to settle everything in one evening. Galatians 1:10 poses a question and leaves the man to answer it, and the Spirit of God is the one who does the slow work after a thing has been named.