I Cannot Get The Words Out At The Table

You have had it ready for about four months.

One sentence. Warm, true, not remotely dramatic. Something about how much you like these evenings, or about one of them specifically, or about the fact that this is your favorite part of the week.

And it has been sitting fully assembled in you at that table on maybe eleven occasions, and it has never once come out.

What stops it is not fear exactly. It is that saying it would be a strange thing for you to do, and everybody would look up, and there would be a small silence in which the sentence sat there being unusual.

And by the time you have thought all that, the moment is four minutes gone.

I want to be careful here, because there is a version of this article that tells a man to be more open with his family, and that version is useless and slightly insulting.

You are open. You are at that table every week. The whole reason a sentence exists in you is that something real is going on.

The problem is not the man. It is the delivery, and the delivery is fixable tonight.

My tongue is the pen of a ready writer

There is an opening line in Psalm 45 that describes exactly the condition of having something ready.

My heart is inditing a good matter: I speak of the things which I have made touching the king: my tongue is the pen of a ready writer. (Psalm 45:1, King James Version)

My heart is inditing a good matter. Inditing is composing. Something is being written inside him before anything is said.

That is you at that table on eleven occasions. The composing has already happened.

You are a man with something already written in him, and a sentence that has not been said has never once been a sentence that was not real. Psalm 45:1 puts the composing in the heart before the speaking, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can name that in a man without asking him to become somebody else.

And then the image at the end, which is the useful part: my tongue is the pen of a ready writer.

A pen does not compose. It transmits. The writer is ready and the pen simply moves.

The verse is describing somebody whose mouth has stopped being an obstacle between the inside and the outside.

You have a pen that has been hesitating, and a mouth that stalled has never once meant nothing was written. The Spirit of God is the one who names the mechanism rather than the man, and it is written in Psalm 45 that the tongue is a pen and the heart is where the composing happens.

And notice that a ready writer is not a bold one.

Ready means available, prepared, at hand. Nothing in the verse is about courage. It is about the instrument being willing to move.

You are able to be ready rather than brave, and a plain sentence said out loud has never once required anybody to be a different kind of man. It is written that my tongue is the pen of a ready writer, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves a pen that has been sitting still.

Say it badly

Here is the instruction and the second half is the important one.

Say the sentence tonight at the table. And do not improve it first.

The improving is where four months went. Every time it nearly came out, some part of you tried to make it better first, and the making better took eleven seconds, and eleven seconds is longer than the moment lasts.

You are able to say something imperfect out loud, and a badly said true thing has never once been worth less than a well said one. The Holy Spirit is the one at work in something said clumsily, and Psalm 45:1 has the pen moving rather than the writer polishing.

And here is why the bad version is actually better, which is worth knowing.

A polished sentence sounds prepared, and a prepared sentence at a kitchen table is an occasion, and an occasion makes everybody sit up and wait for what comes next.

A clumsy one sounds like a man saying a true thing badly, which is exactly what it is, and nobody sits up for that. It lands and the evening carries on.

You have been trying to produce the wrong object, and a stumbled sentence has never once been a smaller gift than a fluent one. The Spirit of God is the one who works through something ordinary and unpolished, and it is written that the tongue is a pen and not an editor.

And say it sideways, while something else is going on, which halves the weight of it.

Not into a silence. In the middle of things, while people are doing something, with your hands busy. That way there is no pause for it to sit in.

You are able to say it into a moving room, and a sentence said sideways has never once been a sentence that was not heard. It is written in Psalm 45 that the heart composes and the tongue transmits, and the Holy Spirit is the one at work in a room that was already going.

What happens afterward

Now the part that has been doing the stopping, and it is worth going through so it stops being a reason.

Somebody might look up. There might be a small silence. Somebody might say something mildly mocking, because that is what a fifteen year old does with a warm sentence.

All of that lasts about four seconds and then the evening continues.

You are able to survive four seconds, and a small silence after a true sentence has never once cost a man anything. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in the four seconds afterward, and Psalm 45:1 has a man speak the thing his heart composed without any account of the reaction.

And here is what happens underneath the mocking, which you will not see.

A boy of fifteen who hears his father say something warm at a table will not acknowledge it and will keep it. That is the standard arrangement and it has been the arrangement for a very long time.

The shrug is the packaging. It is not the response.

You have something that gets kept regardless of what the face does, and a warm sentence has never once been rejected by anybody who mocked it. It is written that the heart is inditing a good matter, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does something in a young person who said nothing back.

And say it once. Not again, not later, not a better version tomorrow.

You are able to say something once and let it stand, and one sentence has never once needed a second attempt to have arrived. It is written in Psalm 45 that the pen moved, and the Spirit of God is the one at work in something said once at an ordinary table.