The Question They Always Ask Me

It will come somewhere in the first hour and you already know who will ask it.

They mean nothing by it. That is what makes it impossible to say anything about. They are being friendly, in the way people are friendly at these things, reaching for a subject the way somebody reaches for a plate.

And the question goes straight into the one place in your life that is not settled.

You have four or five answers already. There is the bright one, which you use when there are people listening. There is the vague one, which buys about ten seconds and usually invites a follow up. There is the honest one, which you have never used, because using it would change the temperature of the room and somebody would apologize and then the whole afternoon would be about it.

So you use the bright one. And it works. And then at some point later, in a bathroom or in a hallway or in the car, you have about ninety seconds of something you did not plan for.

I want to say the first thing carefully. The cost is not the question. Questions are cheap. The cost is having to produce, at speed, in front of people, a version of your own life that is easy for other people to hear.

That is real work, and it is invisible, and you do it four or five times an afternoon while holding something.

They continually say unto me

There is a line in a psalm about a question that keeps arriving, and it is more use to you than almost anything else in the Bible on this subject.

My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God? (Psalm 42:3, King James Version)

Continually say unto me. It is the repetition that is named. Not one cruel person on one occasion. A question that keeps arriving, from people, over and over, into the exact place where a person has no settled answer.

And notice what the psalm does not do. It does not tell him to answer better. It does not suggest he has a duty to satisfy the people asking. It records the asking as part of the affliction and moves on.

Which means the tiredness you feel about a question is legitimate, and it is in the Bible as a thing that happens to people rather than as a failure of grace in them.

You are permitted to find a question wearing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who names that tiredness correctly. Scripture never once tells the man he owes those people a better answer, and it is written into Psalm 42:3 that the continual asking was part of what a person was carrying.

And in that psalm they were being unkind. In your room they are not. But the mechanism is identical and so is the cost.

You are carrying something real, and Psalm 42:3 says it plainly enough that nobody can call it self pity. The Spirit of God is with a woman producing an easy version of her own life for the fifth time in an afternoon, and the written word puts a repeated question in the account of what a person was bearing.

You do not owe the true answer

Let me put something down in front of you that you may never have been given permission for.

There is no obligation to answer that question truthfully.

I want to be careful with that, because it is not permission to lie about anything that matters, and it is not an instruction to be closed. It is narrower and it is important.

A question asked as a social gesture is not a request for information. It is the conversational equivalent of a handshake. And the honest response to a handshake is a handshake, not a full account of your health. You know this instinctively about other subjects. Nobody thinks a person is being dishonest when they say they are fine on a doorstep. What has happened is that this particular question has been dropped into the one area where you cannot do the social version without something twisting.

You have never once owed a room the true answer, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells the difference between a gesture and an inquiry. The written word records the asking without endorsing it, and Scripture nowhere requires a person to hand over the unsettled part of their life on request.

And here is where the cost actually accumulates. It is not the answering. It is that you decide, live, four or five times an afternoon, how much to give. Every one of those is a small negotiation with yourself in about a second and a half, and by the fourth one you are tired in a way nobody could see.

Deciding once, in advance, removes all four negotiations.

You are able to make that decision once instead of five times, and the written word never asks a person to be transparent on demand. The Spirit of God is present in the second and a half where a woman decides how much of herself to hand over, and Psalm 42:3 puts the continual asking in the record as a real weight.

Choose the words in advance

So here is the assignment, and the exactness of it is the point.

Choose the exact words you will use when the question comes, and say them out loud once.

Not a strategy. Not a policy about openness. The actual words. Eight or nine of them, chosen tonight, said out loud once so your mouth has made them.

Something like: nothing to report, and how is the new place. Or: same as last year, and I have been meaning to ask you about your mother. Or simply: that is a long story and today is not the day for it.

Notice what all three do. They are true. They are not hostile. And they hand the conversation back, which is what saves you, because a question you have handed back cannot follow you into the hallway.

You are able to decide once rather than five times, and it has never once required you to be closed with anybody who loves you. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman saying nine words out loud to an empty room the night before, and it is written into Psalm 42:3 that a repeated question is a real thing to carry.

And I want to say the thing about the honest answer, because you may be feeling that this is a dodge.

There will be one or two people in that room who could actually have the real conversation. You know who they are. The decided sentence is not for them; it is for everybody else, and it exists precisely so that you still have something left when you find yourself standing by a window with one of them at about nine in the evening.

You are protecting the real conversation rather than avoiding it, and Psalm 42:3 never once asks the man to explain himself to the people saying it. The Spirit of God keeps something in reserve for the one conversation that is worth having, and the written word puts the continual asking in the account rather than requiring an answer to it.