I Keep The Window Up Now

Simone loves the window down. That is the first thing to know about her, and it matters.

She has driven with the window down since she was nineteen, in every season a person reasonably can, on the way to work and the way back, with her elbow on the frame. Her mother used to say she would catch something. She has been doing it for six years.

She stopped in July.

Nobody in her life noticed, because it happened in the summer, and a young woman putting the air conditioning on in July is not a thing anybody remarks on. But she knows exactly why she stopped and she has never said it out loud.

There is a grinding. It is at the front, on one side, and she cannot hear it at all with the window up and the air on, and she can hear it perfectly with the window down.

So the window has been up since July.

Now I want to be honest with you about how this reads from the outside and how it is on the inside, because those are two different things.

From the outside, this looks like a young woman ignoring a car. That is not what is happening. Simone thinks about it constantly. She thinks about it at every intersection. She has an entire relationship with that sound and it is one of the more significant things in her week.

What she has done is not ignore it. What she has done is stop confirming it.

And that is a very particular thing, and I think a lot of people do it. It is not that she does not know. It is that as long as she does not hear it today, today it is not a fact about today. It is a fact about July. Which is further away.

Her friend rode with her in August, went to put the window down out of habit, and Simone said "AC's on" a little too quickly.

And her friend put her hand back down and said, "Okay," and looked at her, and did not say anything else, because they have been friends since school and she knows better than to push at something Simone has just fenced.

Not confirming it is not the same as not knowing

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

I am not going to guess what that grinding is. I have not been near the car, I am not qualified, and a woman at a distance guessing at a sound from the front of somebody's vehicle would be doing real harm. And I want to say this next part plainly and without dressing it up: a grinding sound from the front of a car, on one side, is exactly the kind of thing that goes to somebody qualified this week and not after payday. That is not me being dramatic. That is me refusing to be the reason a message got read and a car did not get looked at.

Now, with that said, let me talk about the window.

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.John 8:32

That verse is on posters everywhere. And because it is on posters, the order it comes in almost never gets noticed.

The knowing comes first. The freedom comes second. And the second one is described as a consequence of the first, not as a reward for deserving it.

Which means the freedom is on the far side of the knowing and there is no route to it that goes around. There is no version where a person gets to the free part while carefully arranging not to know.

And that is not a threat. Read the whole sentence again. It is a promise about what knowing does. It sets people free. That is not what anybody expects knowing to do, which is why the fence goes up in the first place.

You are not somebody who does not know, and Scripture puts the knowing before the freedom as a road rather than as a test. It is written that you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free, which describes a consequence rather than a condition, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a promise about a Tuesday drive with the window down.

You have been holding a fact at arm's length rather than out of reach, and the passage treats knowing as the thing that liberates rather than the thing that costs. John 8 puts the freeing inside the truth itself, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that a real prospect rather than a slogan.

The window was never the shelter

Here is what I want to say about six years of an elbow on a window frame.

That is not a small thing to give up, and I do not think you gave it up lightly, and I do not think you gave it up for a car. I think it went because there is something in that sound that means a number, and the number means a month, and a month at twenty five is already tight.

So the window went up. And here is the thing the window actually did.

It did not protect you from the sound. You know about the sound. It protected you from the moment, the specific two seconds at an intersection where a thing is undeniably true and you have to decide something. And two seconds of that a day is a real weight, and getting rid of it is a real relief.

But look at what got given away in the trade. Six years of a thing you loved. Every drive since July has been a little smaller.

You have been paying with something you love, and the written word never once asks anybody to fund a fear out of the good parts of their life. John 8 puts the freedom on the far side of the knowing rather than on the far side of the giving up, and the Spirit of God is what makes that direction available this week.

And I want to say the tender thing straight out, because it is the whole of why the window is up.

The fear is not the grinding. The fear is being twenty five and being told a number you cannot pay, in a room, by a stranger, with nothing to say back.

You were never expected to have the answer in the room, and no verse anywhere requires a woman to arrive at a counter already able to solve it. It is written to cast all your care upon Him for He cares for you, which is Peter putting the carrying somewhere other than on her, and His Spirit is what makes walking in without a plan an act of trust rather than of exposure.