Four Apologies In Two Minutes

Nia counted them afterward, in the car, and there were four.

Sorry, is this the right desk? One.

Sorry to bother you. Two.

Sorry, I don't know what it's called. Three.

Sorry, I know you're busy. Four.

Two minutes and eleven seconds, by the clock on her phone, from walking in to walking out. Four apologies.

Now, what was any of that for?

She had an appointment. She was at the correct desk. She was not bothering anybody, because the man's entire job that morning was to stand at that desk and be bothered by people with appointments. She did not know the name of the part, which is true of most people and is precisely why a person goes to a shop rather than a parts store. And he was busy in the ordinary way anybody is busy at work, and not one bit busier because she was there.

So four sorries were issued for nothing at all. Not one of them corresponded to an actual offense.

And here is the thing Nia has noticed and cannot unnotice, which is why she counted them.

She did not get her question answered.

There was a question. She had it in the car. It was about whether the noise was the same thing they looked at in the spring, which is a completely reasonable thing to want to know.

And she had about two minutes of speaking time in that room, and she spent a real portion of it apologizing, and the question did not fit.

Her friend said afterward, "What did he say about the spring?"

And Nia said, "Oh. I didn't ask."

The apologies were spending the speaking time

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

I am not going to tell you to stop being polite. Politeness is not the problem, and a world with less of it is worse. And I am not going to guess at what that noise is, because I have not seen the car and it would be no help to anybody.

What I want to look at is the arithmetic of a two minute conversation.

Because a person only gets so many sentences at a counter. Not because anybody is limiting them. Because there is a natural length to that kind of exchange, and both people can feel where it ends, and inside that length there is room for maybe six or seven things.

Four of Nia's went on apologies. That left two or three, and the question needed one of them and did not get it.

You have an access that was never yours to earn, and Scripture calls it boldness. Ephesians 3 puts boldness and access and confidence into one clause and none of it is charged to the one coming, and His Spirit is the one who makes that as true at a counter on a Tuesday as at an altar on a Sunday.

The sorries were not a character flaw. They were spending. Real speaking time, handed over, for nothing received.

Now here is the verse, and I want you to see what it asks people to walk in with.

Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.Hebrews 10:22

Full assurance.

That is a striking phrase for a letter written to people who knew perfectly well they had no standing on their own. The whole book has been arguing that the way in was opened by somebody else, at cost, and that it is now open.

And having established that, what the writer asks for is not gratitude expressed as apology. It is assurance. Come in properly. Come all the way in. Do not stand in the doorway saying sorry for being here.

That is not arrogance. It is accuracy about an invitation that has already been issued.

You are not somebody who has to apologize for arriving, and Scripture asks for full assurance in the drawing near rather than for an apology at the door. It is written let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, which prescribes the posture and it is not a deferential one, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a fact about a service desk as well as a sanctuary.

You have been standing in a doorway apologizing when the invitation was already issued. Hebrews 10 puts the way in as opened before it says one word about how anybody should feel about using it, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that a settled thing rather than an aspiration.

Spend one of them on the question instead

Here is the practical thing, and it is not "stop apologizing," because that never works and it makes a person self conscious in a way that produces more of them.

Do not try to stop. Try to move one.

At the next visit, count them on your fingers, discreetly, against your leg. One, two, three.

And when you get to the fourth, instead of the sorry, say the question.

That is the whole technique. You do not have to be a different person. You do not have to feel differently. You just have to take the one that was going to be spent on nothing and spend it on the thing you came for.

And here is why it works when "be more assertive" does not. It does not ask for a change of temperament. It asks for a substitution, once, in a place where a word was already coming out.

You have permission to spend your own speaking time on your own question, and no verse anywhere requires a person to earn their place in a room with apologies first. Hebrews 10 has the way opened and the drawing near invited, and the Spirit of God is what makes one substituted sentence an act of agreement with that.

And I want to say the tender half, because it is the reason the four exist.

Nia apologizes because she does not want to take up space that somebody else might need more. That is not weakness. That is a genuinely lovely instinct and the world runs on people like her.

But look at where the instinct has landed. She is now taking up the same two minutes and getting less out of them, which serves nobody, including the man at the desk, who now has a customer who is going to call back later with a question that could have been answered while she stood there.

Asking is not taking. Asking is what the two minutes were for.

You were never an imposition in that room, and Scripture puts the coming near among the things a person is invited to do rather than the things they must be forgiven for. It is written that we have boldness to enter by the blood of Jesus, which is Hebrews 10 in the verses just above, and His Spirit is what makes that boldness ordinary rather than presumptuous.