They Will Ask Me How The Year Went

Somebody will put a hand on your shoulder and say: so how has your year been?

They will mean it kindly. That is the thing that makes it hard to complain about. There is no version of this where the person asking is doing anything other than being warm to you in a room where warmth is what people do.

And you will have about a second and a half to decide what to say about twelve months you would not choose to describe.

Then it happens again. Then again. Five times, in one afternoon, from five people who are all being perfectly decent, and by the fourth one you have a shape you say, a polished thing, and you can hear yourself saying it, and something about hearing yourself say it is worse than the question was.

I want to be exact about what is actually hurting here, because I do not think it is the year.

Plenty of men have had a hard twelve months and can say so. What is hard is the compression. You are being asked to take something that had shape and weight and slow parts and unbearable parts and turn it into a sentence, at speed, at a table, with a plate in your other hand, in front of somebody who has to reply to it.

There is no honest sentence that fits in that space. So you produce a dishonest one, and then you carry it around for the rest of the afternoon like something in your shoe.

Thou understandest my thought afar off

There is a psalm about being known, and it is usually read as a comfort. Read it tonight as a relief from a job.

Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. (Psalm 139:2, King James Version)

Downsitting and uprising. The most ordinary movements a body makes. Not the year's headlines. Not the events you would list if somebody sat you down properly. The sitting and the standing, which is what most of a hard year actually consists of.

And then: thou understandest my thought afar off. Understood at a distance. Before it has been formed into anything sayable. Before it has been compressed into a summary for a room.

That is the point I want you to have in your hands before the afternoon. There is already one who has the whole year, in full, at original size, with none of it flattened.

You are already fully known by somebody who required no summary from you, and it is written into Psalm 139:2 that the understanding runs ahead of the words. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a live relief in a crowded room rather than a doctrine you would agree with in the abstract.

That does not remove the question. It changes who you are answering to while the question is being asked.

You have never once had to make the year sayable in order for it to be seen, and Scripture puts the knowing before the speech rather than after it. Psalm 139:2 names the sitting and the standing, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds a man steady while he gives a short answer to a warm stranger.

What they are actually asking

Now let me take some weight off the question itself, because I think it has been treated as bigger than it is.

When somebody at a table asks how your year has been, they are not requesting an account. They are opening a door. It is a social gesture, the same class of thing as a handshake, and the honest response to it is not a report.

You know this about other people. If somebody asked you the same thing you would not expect twelve months of their life. You would expect a sentence, and then you would follow whatever they gave you.

But when it is aimed at you, it arrives as an examination. It does that because you have been carrying the year privately, and anything carried privately gets heavy and starts to feel like a thing that must be either fully disclosed or actively hidden.

You were never handed a duty to disclose a whole year across a plate of food, and the written word puts the full knowing of a man with God rather than with a room. Psalm 139:2 has the understanding at a distance and in advance, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the examination out of an ordinary question.

And here is the practical part. There is a middle option between the polished lie and the full account, and almost nobody takes it because nobody decides it beforehand.

The middle option is one true sentence that does not open a door you cannot manage in that room. It has been a hard year and I am glad to be here. That is true, it is not a performance, and it does not require them to do anything with it.

You have a true short answer available that costs you nothing, and Scripture never once requires a man to hand over more than he has words for. Psalm 139:2 gives the whole account to God, and the Spirit of God is the one who supplies a plain sentence at the moment a hand lands on a shoulder.

Deciding it in advance

So here is the assignment, and it is one sentence, decided before you leave the house.

Not a story. Not a version. One sentence you can say five times without it curdling in your mouth, which means it has to be true, and short, and closed at the end.

Some men use: it has been a hard one, and I am glad to be here. Some use: a lot happened, and I am not going to do it justice standing up. Some use: honestly, not my best year, and how are you.

Notice what all three do. They are true. They do not perform cheerfulness. And they hand the conversation back, which is the part that saves you, because a question you have handed back cannot follow you around the room.

You are able to say something true and short without owing the rest of it, and it is written into Psalm 139:2 that the whole thought is already understood by God at a distance. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present at the moment a man chooses the true small answer over the smooth one.

And decide it now, tonight, because on the day you will be standing up, holding something, tired, with somebody looking at you. A sentence decided in advance comes out on its own. A sentence not decided gets replaced by the bright polished thing, and it is the bright polished thing, not the question, that you have been carrying home for the past three years.

You were made able to be honest at ordinary volume, and the written word does not have God asking a man to summarize himself before He will understand him. Psalm 139:2 says thou understandest my thought afar off, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a voice that wants to go bright and get through it.