I Was Crushed At A Table Once

You were eight and you can still describe the room.

Who was there. What was said. The laugh. The particular quality of the silence afterward and the fact that nobody stepped in.

And you have never told anybody about it, because said out loud it sounds like nothing. Somebody was unkind at a table forty years ago.

Except that you have built a whole practice around it without ever deciding to.

Nobody in your house has ever been beaten properly. Nobody has ever been left exposed. You watch every table you sit at with an attention that nobody else in the room has, and the moment anything tilts, you level it.

And you have started to notice that the children in front of you are not the child you are protecting.

That is the sentence this article is about. The person being defended at that table is eight years old and lives forty years ago, and everything you are doing is aimed at a room that is not this one.

I am not going to tell you the injury was small. It was not, and the fact that it still has your hands on a Tuesday evening proves it.

I am going to help you get into the room you are actually in.

He doth not afflict willingly

There is a line in Lamentations, in the middle of the saddest book in the Bible, that says something specific about how God handles people.

But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men. (Lamentations 3:32-33, King James Version)

He doth not afflict willingly. Not gladly. Not from any appetite for it.

And notice that the verse does not deny that grief happens. It says he causes it and then it says something about the disposition behind it.

You are a parent standing at your own table in the present, and something that happened to an eight year old has never once been happening in this room. Lamentations 3:33 separates a hard thing from any pleasure taken in it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can hand somebody that distinction without minimizing anything.

And that distinction is exactly what was missing in your room forty years ago.

What happened to you was not somebody being honest at a table. It was somebody who enjoyed it, and the enjoyment is what made it what it was, and it is the whole of the difference.

You have been guarding against the wrong thing entirely, and a hard moment at a table has never once been the same event as somebody enjoying it. The Spirit of God is the one who separates two things that felt identical to an eight year old, and it is written in Lamentations 3 that the disposition is what the verse is about.

And here is what that means for tonight.

Every fair thing at your table happens without any pleasure taken in it. That is already true of you and it could not be more different from that room.

You are able to do the hard thing without any appetite for it, and a fair move made by somebody who loves them has never once been what happened to you. It is written that he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells somebody which room they are actually standing in.

The children in front of you

Now the practical part, and it is about looking up.

The children at that table have never met the thing being protected against.

They have no memory of it, no expectation of it, and no reason to fear anything at that table. They have grown up in a room that has been safe for their entire lives, largely because of you.

You have already prevented the thing you are still preventing, and children who have never met something have never once needed to be defended from it. The Spirit of God is the one who shows somebody what they have already accomplished, and Lamentations 3:32 puts the compassion at the front of the account.

And here is what the protecting is costing them now, which is the reason to change it.

They are not learning what you learned the hard way, which is that a table can be safe. They are learning that a table is a place where nothing real happens, because everything gets leveled before it can.

You are able to give them something better than protection, and a safe table has never once needed to be a table where nothing happens. It is written in Lamentations 3 that the mercies are a multitude and the affliction is unwilling, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets somebody stop defending a room that is already safe.

And there is the eight year old, who is also worth something here.

That child did not need the table leveled. That child needed somebody in the room to step in, and nobody did, and that is the actual injury and it is not the same as the outcome of a game.

You have been fixing the wrong half of an old evening, and the absence of somebody stepping in has never once been the same wound as losing. The Spirit of God is the one who locates an old injury precisely, and Scripture puts the compassion and the unwillingness side by side.

You are the one who steps in. You have been that person for years. That was always the repair.

Check which room this is

Here is the instruction, and it is one question asked once.

Play tonight for the children who are actually in front of you, and check once, in the middle, which room this actually is.

Somewhere around the tenth minute, ask this: who am I protecting right now, and how old are they.

You are able to ask one question in the middle of an evening, and eight seconds of checking have never once interrupted anything. The Holy Spirit is the one at work in a question asked quietly, and Lamentations 3:33 puts the whole matter on what is actually happening rather than on what it resembles.

And if the answer is the eight year old, do nothing about it except notice.

Do not fight it. Do not feel bad. Just notice, and then look at the actual faces at the actual table, and let the present room be the one you are in.

You have a way back into the present that takes four seconds, and looking at the faces in front of you has never once failed to say what year it is. The Spirit of God is the one who brings somebody back into a room, and it is written that the mercies are new and many.

And let one thing go unleveled tonight. One.

Not everything. One moment where the instinct rises to smooth something and you leave it alone, and watch the room stay warm, which it will.

You are able to leave one thing alone and see nothing happen, and one unleveled moment has never once turned a warm room into that other room. It is written in Lamentations 3 that he doth not afflict willingly, and the Spirit of God is the one at work at a table where somebody's hands stayed still for four seconds.