My Brother Rents And I Feel It

You did not tell him for eight days.

There was a reason at the time. He had the thing with his job going on and it did not seem like the week for it, and then his birthday was in there, and then by the time you did tell him it had become a slightly odd thing that you had not.

And you told him in the end like a man mentioning something in passing. You said, we finally got that place sorted, and moved straight on to asking about his work.

He said congratulations. He meant it. He is your brother and he was pleased for you.

And since then you have been managing it.

You do not mention the house when he is there. When he came over in September you talked about the game for two hours and he left without you showing him the back, which he must have noticed and did not say. Your wife asked you afterward why you had not taken him out there.

And you did not have an answer for her, because the real answer is that he is thirty nine and he rents, and you are thirty six and you do not, and something in you has decided that being glad about this in front of him is a thing you cannot do.

What the managing is actually doing

Let me tell you what your brother has been getting from you since the spring, because it is not what you intended and it is worse.

He has been getting a smaller version of you.

You think he is being spared something. What he is actually experiencing is that his brother has gone slightly careful around him. A subject that everybody else gets to talk about with you is closed when he is in the room, and he has noticed, because people always notice, and the thing he has to explain to himself is why.

And the explanations available to a man in that position are worse than the truth.

You have been protecting him and have handed him something worse, and gladness kept quiet in a room has never once been the same as gladness that was not there. The Holy Spirit is the one who has been in the front room during a two hour conversation about a game, and it is written in Luke 15 that it was meet that we should make merry, and be glad.

And I want to name the belief underneath the managing, because it is not true and it is doing all of the work.

The belief is that your gladness costs him something. That there is a fixed quantity, and your having the house takes a share that was his.

There is no such quantity and you would not be able to defend it out loud. But you have been behaving for six months as though there were, and that is why you did not take him out to the back.

You have been running an arithmetic with no basis, and your good thing has never once been subtracted from somebody else's. Luke 15 has a father insisting on the merriment in front of a son who is objecting to it, and the Spirit of God is the one who put that scene in the book.

It was meet that we should make merry

Here is the verse, and the situation around it is exactly yours.

It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found. (Luke 15:32, King James Version)

That is the father, at the end of the parable, speaking to the older son who is standing outside refusing to come in.

And look at what he does not do. He does not cancel the party. He does not move it, or make it smaller, or apologize for it, or take the older son aside and explain that the celebration means nothing really.

He says it was meet, which means fitting, appropriate, right. He defends the gladness.

You have permission to hold onto a gladness rather than shrink it, and celebrating something has never once been an argument against anybody standing outside it. The Holy Spirit is the one who preserved that as the father's answer, and the written word has a father defending the merriment to a son who is objecting.

And there is something else in that scene that matters for you.

The father goes out to the older son. He does not stay inside and let him stand in the yard. The whole exchange happens because the father came out, and the thing he says is: son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.

He holds both. The party stays a party, and he goes out to the one who is not in it, and neither of those cancels the other.

You are able to keep the gladness and go out to your brother, and those two have never once required you to choose one of them. Luke 15 has the father doing both in the same scene, and the Spirit of God is the one who wrote it that way.