Everybody Says Get Rid Of It

Her son says it every time he visits. Her sister said it in July. A woman at church said it in the parking lot in a kind voice with a hand on her arm.

And the mechanic who does her tires said it in August, which stung more than the others, because he is the one who actually knows.

Every single one of them loves her. Not one of them was being unkind. Every one of them has looked at the arithmetic and reached the same conclusion, which is that a car of that age with that mileage is a poor place for a woman on her own to keep putting money.

They are probably right about the arithmetic.

And Vernice is not going to get rid of it, and she cannot tell you why, and that is the actual problem.

Not the car. The not being able to say why.

Because when a person cannot articulate a reason, three things happen, and they happen in order.

First, every conversation becomes a defense. She hears the subject coming from about four sentences away and she starts assembling.

Second, the defenses get worse over time, because she is improvising under pressure and the good reasons are not available at speed. What comes out is it gets me where I need to go, which is thin, and she knows it is thin while she is saying it.

Third, and this is the one that costs, she starts to wonder whether they are right. Not about the car. About her. About whether she is being stubborn, or sentimental, or the kind of older woman who cannot be told anything.

That third one has been running since about June.

Her son said, gently, the last time, "Mom, I'm not trying to boss you."

And Vernice said, "I know."

And he said, "I just don't want you stuck somewhere."

And she said, "I know," again, and neither of them knew where to go after that.

Nobody in this has done anything wrong

Let me put down what I am not doing, so nothing has to brace.

I am not going to tell you to keep the car. I have not seen it, I do not know what it costs you, and a stranger on the internet taking a side in a family conversation about money would be doing something reckless.

And I am not going to tell you to get rid of it either. That is not mine.

And I am not going to suggest that anybody in your life has been overstepping, because nothing in this says that. A son who does not want his mother stranded is a good son, and the man with the tires told you the truth as he sees it, which is what you go to him for.

What I want to do is something much smaller and much more useful.

You are not obliged to satisfy thirty opinions, and Scripture says it is a very small thing to be judged of man's judgment. 1 Corinthians 4 has Paul setting other people's assessments beside God's and finding them small, without one word of contempt for the people holding them, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that scale available to a woman who has been declining the same advice for a year.

I want to get one decision made, by one person, on purpose.

Here is the verse, and it is from a passage where Paul is refereeing an argument between people who each thought the other was clearly wrong.

Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.Romans 14:5

Now, look at what he does not do there.

He does not settle the question. He had an opinion, and he says so elsewhere, and here he declines to impose it. He does not say the strong are right and the weak should catch up. He does not tell them to reach consensus.

He puts the standard somewhere else entirely, and the standard is: fully persuaded in his own mind.

That is not a claim that all answers are equally good. It is a claim about where the decision has to be made. It has to be made inside the person who will live with it, in a way they could actually explain, and a person who has not done that is unsettled regardless of whether their position is correct.

You are not being stubborn, and Scripture puts the standard at being fully persuaded in your own mind rather than at agreeing with the room. It is written let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind, which locates the settling inside the person rather than in a consensus, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a real permission at a family table.

You have been defending a position you never actually adopted, and the passage names exactly what is missing. Romans 14 asks for a persuasion rather than a defense, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that distinction land as relief rather than as a further demand.

A defense is not a decision

Here is the thing I most want to hand you, and it is the whole of the message.

Vernice has never decided to keep that car.

She has declined to get rid of it, perhaps thirty times, which is a different act entirely. Declining is something a person does in response to somebody else. It happens on their timing, in their conversation, using words assembled in about two seconds.

Deciding is something a person does alone, in advance, with reasons they could write down.

And a woman who has declined thirty times and decided zero times is exhausted, because she has to do the whole thing again every time it comes up, and she has never once had the thing that would end it, which is a settled position she could simply report.

You are allowed to settle this in your own mind, and Scripture hands that decision to the person whose life it is. Romans 14 says let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind, which is Paul refusing to arbitrate between two people who each have a reasonable position, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a settled mind a finished thing rather than a claim to be defended.

So here is the work, and it is about twenty minutes, and it happens at a table with nobody else in the room.

Write down what the car actually costs. Six months of it. Every repair, the insurance, the gas, all of it, the real numbers, not the ones in her head. If any of them wants checking, the garage has the record and will read it out over the phone.

Then write down what it would cost to change. Not the price of another car. The whole thing: the process, the conversation at the bank, the not knowing, the week of it.

Then look at both, and decide, and write the decision on one line.

It might be keep. It might be change. That is genuinely not my business and I have no view.

What matters is that it gets written, and dated, and signed, so that the next time it comes up she is not assembling. She is reporting.

You have permission to make this decision on your own terms and on your own timing, and no verse anywhere hands that to the people around a table. Romans 14 puts the persuading inside the person's own mind, and the Spirit of God is what makes twenty minutes at a table an act of obedience rather than of obstinacy.

And I want to say the tender half, because it is the reason the third thing hurts.

The wondering since June is not about the car. It is about whether a woman of her age is still somebody whose judgment counts.

That is what every one of those conversations has quietly been asking, without anybody meaning it, and it is the question underneath the tiredness.

You were never being humored, and Scripture puts the deciding with the person who will live with it rather than with the ones advising. Romans 14 has Paul declining to overrule anybody on a matter he had his own view about, and His Spirit is what makes that respect a fact rather than a courtesy.