I Think I Am The One They Dread

It arrived about four months ago and you have not been able to put it down.

You were thinking about something else entirely, and a memory of the previous year went past, and you saw it from the other side of the table for the first time.

And what you saw was a man being difficult.

Not a monster. Nothing dramatic. A man who says a particular kind of thing, in a particular tone, at a particular point in the afternoon, and who has been doing it for long enough that people have probably started to arrange themselves around it.

You have spent the months since checking that against the evidence, and the evidence is not good. There was a pause once, after something you said, that you noticed at the time and dismissed. Somebody changed the subject slightly too fast. A person you like has been slightly less easy with you for about two years and you have never known why.

Let me say the first thing plainly, because a man in your position is at real risk of doing something worse than the original problem.

Working this out about yourself is not a catastrophe and it is not a character verdict. It is what happens when a man's self awareness catches up with his behavior, and the catching up is a good thing even though it is unpleasant. Most people never get here at all.

Cleanse thou me from secret faults

There is a line in a psalm that is almost never quoted and is exactly where a man in this position stands.

Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults. (Psalm 19:12, King James Version)

Who can understand his errors. It is a question, and it is asked in a tone of genuine bewilderment. A man is admitting that he cannot see the whole of his own behavior from inside it.

And then the request: cleanse thou me from secret faults. Secret meaning hidden, including hidden from him. He is asking to be dealt with about things he has not managed to identify.

That is a remarkable prayer for a man to pray, and it is not an anguished one. Look at the register of it. There is no self hatred in that verse. It is a plain acknowledgement and a plain request, made by somebody who is not in a panic about his own soul.

You are able to name a fault without collapsing about it, and it is written into Psalm 19:12 as a plain request rather than as an anguished confession. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps the register right for a man who could easily go too far, and Scripture asks who can understand his errors as an honest question and not a self accusation.

And notice who is being asked to do the work.

You are asking to be cleansed rather than undertaking to fix yourself, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the actual dealing with a man over time. Psalm 19:12 puts the verb entirely on God's side of it, and the written word never once hands a person the job of repairing his own hidden faults by effort.

The thing that would make it worse

Now let me stop you doing the thing you are about to do, because I have seen it and it is worse than the original problem.

There is an apology forming. A proper one, at the day itself, in front of several people, naming it and saying that the realization has landed and asking them to point it out next time.

Do not do that.

Here is why. An apology like that, delivered at a gathering, makes the whole afternoon about you a second time. Everybody has to respond. Somebody will feel obliged to say it was fine, which they will then be lying about. Somebody else will be embarrassed. And a person who has been quietly managing you for years will now have to have a conversation they never asked for, on a day they came for something else.

It is a confession that costs other people, and a confession that costs other people is usually about relief rather than about repair.

You were never going to fix two years in one afternoon, and Scripture puts the cleansing on God rather than on a man's dramatic gesture. The Spirit of God does the slow work in somebody over months, and Psalm 19:12 asks for that rather than for a scene.

And there is a second thing, which is the one that matters. The apology is aimed backward. It asks people to relitigate afternoons that are over. What would actually help them is aimed forward, and it is much smaller, and it happens before anything starts.

You have something available that costs nobody anything, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when somebody chooses the small forward thing over the large backward one. The written word keeps the whole request between a man and God, and Psalm 19:12 is a private prayer rather than a public announcement.

One sentence, before the meal

So here is the assignment, and the timing and the size of it are both deliberate.

Say one plain sentence to one person before the meal, and ask for nothing back.

One person: the likeliest one to be on the receiving end of it, or the one who has probably been managing you.

Before the meal: early, quietly, in a hallway or a kitchen, before anybody is tired and before anything has happened. And one sentence, forward facing. Something like: I am glad to be here, and I am going to be easier this year. Not an apology, not an explanation, not a request for feedback.

You are able to say one forward facing sentence that asks nothing of anybody, and it has never once required you to open the whole subject. The Spirit of God is with a man saying eleven quiet words in a hallway, and it is written into Psalm 19:12 that the cleansing belongs to God rather than to a man's own campaign.

And then the actual work, which is not a sentence at all. It is that you go and be easier. Not perfectly. One notch. You notice the moment you always take, and you do not take it, once.

That is what would help the people at that table. Not being told you have realized. One afternoon of it happening.

You are able to change one notch rather than announce a transformation, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the work in a man across the four hours where nobody is watching for it. Psalm 19:12 asks for cleansing rather than for a performance of it, and the written word leaves the whole matter in God's hands.