I Have To Tell Him The Quote

It is folded in the front pocket of your bag and you have not taken it out since Tuesday.

You have started four times.

Once in the car on the way back from her mother's, and you got as far as saying that the man had been. Once while he was cooking, and he said what, and you said nothing, it can wait. Once at about eleven on Wednesday night when you thought he was awake and he was not. And once this morning, which you abandoned before a word came out because of what his face was doing about something at work.

Four starts. Two days. One folded piece of paper.

And here is the thing that makes this heavier than it should be, and I want to name it early so we can work with it.

You are not afraid of him. He is not a man who shouts about money and he has never once made you feel small about a number.

What you are dreading is his face doing the thing it does. The half second where the shoulders go, and he recovers fast because he is kind, and you see the recovery happen, and then he says something reassuring.

And you would rather carry a folded piece of paper for two days than be the one who makes that happen in his face.

What the two days have done

Let me say what those two days have actually been for, because they have not been for him.

Every hour that paper stays in your bag, the telling gets a little bigger.

On Tuesday it was a quote. By Wednesday it was a quote and the fact that you had not mentioned it. By this morning it was a quote, and two days of not mentioning it, and the small strangeness he has probably already noticed in you at breakfast.

That is the arithmetic of putting something off. The thing itself stays exactly the same size. The telling grows every single hour.

You have been growing this while you carried it, and two days of waiting has never once made a number smaller. It is written in Proverbs 15 that a soft answer turneth away wrath, and the Holy Spirit is the one who knows what a gentle sentence can do in a kitchen.

And there is a second thing happening, which is quieter and which he is already in.

He is not stupid. He has been married to you for a long time and something has been slightly off since Tuesday, and he has almost certainly noticed and has decided not to push.

So both of you are now managing something. You are managing the paper and he is managing whatever it is he thinks might be wrong, and his version is probably worse than the real one, because an unexplained strangeness in a wife invites a lot of guesses and almost none of them are about a boiler.

You have been protecting him from a number while he invented something worse, and two days of silence has never once been the kinder option. Proverbs 15 puts a soft answer next to grievous words as two ways of speaking rather than as speaking and not speaking, and the Spirit of God is the one who assumed something would be said.

A soft answer

Here is the verse, and I want you to notice that it is about how, not whether.

A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger. (Proverbs 15:1, King James Version)

Both halves of that verse are about speech. A soft answer and grievous words. Two kinds of saying.

There is no third option in it where nothing is said at all, and that is the option you have been taking for two days.

You are choosing between two ways of saying it rather than between saying it and not, and silence has never once been one of the alternatives that verse offers. The written word puts a soft answer and grievous words side by side as the two available roads, and the Holy Spirit is the one who set the choice up that way.

Now let me be specific about what soft means here, because it does not mean padded.

A soft answer is not a long one. It is not a build up, not a preamble, not eleven sentences of context before the number arrives. Those are not gentleness. They are a way of putting off the moment, and they make the listener brace harder, because everybody knows what a long run up means.

Soft means low, plain, unarmored. It means the thing said in a level voice without a wall of preparation around it.

You have the softest possible way to do this available to you, and a plain sentence at a table has never once been a harsh thing to say to a man who loves you. Proverbs 15 contrasts a soft answer with grievous words rather than with a well prepared one, and the Spirit of God is the one who put the emphasis on the tone rather than on the length.