I Stop At The Word Lord

Alone in that house she is a different volume entirely.

She walks about. She uses her hands. She has been known to stop in the middle of the hallway and start again from the top because the first attempt was not saying what she meant, and she does it at a volume that would carry into the street if the window were open, and sometimes the window is open and she has decided not to mind.

Her grandson is nineteen and lives with her since March.

He is out most days. And on the days he is in, in that back room with the door shut and headphones on and no interest whatsoever in what his grandmother is doing at ten in the morning, she prays at about a fifth of the volume.

She has measured it, more or less. It is not a whisper for the first part. She can do the opening at a low speaking volume without trouble.

It goes at the word.

Every time. Whatever else is in the sentence, when she gets to the name, her voice drops to nothing and the word is shaped and not said, and then the next few words come back up a little, and by the end of the sentence she is back at a low speaking volume again.

Four months of that now. And she can tell you exactly what it costs, because she is not a woman who deceives herself: it makes the whole thing careful. And careful is not the register she prays in, and has not been since she was twenty-six, and she can feel the difference every single time.

She is sixty-four.

He is a good boy and he would not laugh. That is what makes it strange. She is not protecting herself from a nineteen-year-old's opinion. She has known him his whole life and he loves her and he would probably think it was fine.

She just cannot make the word come out at full volume with another human being under the roof.

The volume was never about him

I want to say the useful thing first, and it is not gentle, and I think you will prefer it.

That is not about your grandson.

You said it yourself: he is out most days, he has headphones on, he would not laugh, he loves you, he would probably think it was fine. Every one of those is true and none of them has made any difference to your volume in four months.

Which means the presence of another person under the roof is doing something older than that boy.

I do not know what. I am not going to guess at a woman of sixty-four's history from a distance and hand her a theory about her own life; that would be presumptuous and probably wrong. But you might know, and it may be worth an honest half hour with God sometime this week, and you are entirely capable of that conversation without me in it.

What I can do is put the thing that is true underneath the volume.

For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.Acts 4:20

Peter and John said that to a court that had specifically ordered them to stop, and it was not defiance for its own sake and it was not bravado.

Read the construction: we cannot but speak. It is a double negative doing the work of an inevitability. They are not saying we refuse to be silent. They are saying silence is not available to us, the way it is not available to a man who has been under water and comes up.

You are somebody in whom this is not containable, and that is not encouragement for a woman in a hallway, it is what is written, and the Holy Spirit is the reason it is landing on the four months rather than on a passage you have probably taught somebody.

And notice what they had seen and heard. Not a doctrine. A person, and what He did, and that is exactly the word your voice drops on.

Now let me say something about what the careful register costs you, because you named it and you were right.

Careful is not how you pray. You have prayed at full volume, walking about, using your hands, starting sentences again from the top since you were twenty-six, and four months of a fifth of that is not a small adjustment, it is a different activity.

You have been doing a reduced version of the most important thing in your life for four months. Scripture says the speaking is not containable, and the Spirit of God is the one who put that in you at twenty-six and has not taken it out, and He has been in that hallway at ten in the morning for every one of the quiet ones.

I want to be practical about the grandson for one line and then leave him alone.

He is nineteen and he lives in your house and he has a grandmother who prays. Whatever you do with your volume, that is already the arrangement, and he already knows, and there is nothing to protect him from.

You are permitted the whole word, at your own volume, in your own house. The word says we cannot but speak, and the Spirit is the seal on it, and there has never been a version of this in which the name gets shaped instead of said.

You are somebody in whom this is not containable, and the double negative in that verse is doing exactly that work. Scripture says we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard, and the Holy Spirit put that in you at twenty-six and has not taken it out.