Neither Of Us Has Said Anything About It

They have one car. That is the fact this whole thing sits on top of.

Miriam drives it on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Ari has it Wednesdays and Fridays, and they work out the weekend on Thursday night. It has run like that for six years and it works, and both of them are a little proud of how well it works.

The light came on in the second week of August.

Miriam saw it first, on a Monday. She noticed it, thought I will ask Ari, and then did not, because he had a thing at work that week and she did not want to add to it.

Ari saw it on the Wednesday. He assumed she had seen it. He assumed, further, that if she had seen it and not said anything, then either it was fine or she had already dealt with it, and he did not want to be the husband who checks up on his wife.

That was August the thirteenth. Neither of them has mentioned it since.

Now, I want you to notice what a strange and gentle thing has happened, because there is nothing wrong in this marriage. Nobody is avoiding anybody. Nobody is angry. Nobody is hiding a thing from the other.

Both of them are being considerate, and the considerateness has produced a silence that neither of them would have chosen.

This is a real phenomenon and it has a shape. Two people share an object. One of them notices something. Each one, independently, reasons that the other has more claim on the matter, or more knowledge of it, or less capacity this week. Each of them defers. And a deferral by two people at once is indistinguishable, from the outside and from the inside, from an agreement that nothing needs saying.

Four weeks later the light is still on and it has acquired a strange new property. It has become slightly awkward to raise.

Not because of the car. Because of the four weeks. Because now, whoever speaks first is also implicitly saying: I have known about this since August.

So the cost of the first sentence has been quietly rising every day since the thirteenth, paid by two people who love each other and are both waiting for the other one to make it cheap.

Last Sunday Ari's mother rode in the back and said, "What's that light?"

And they said, at exactly the same time, "It's fine."

And they looked at each other in the mirror.

Two considerate people can build a wall out of nothing

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

I am not going to guess what that light is. I have not seen the car and I am not the man to ask. And I am not going to tell either of you that you did something wrong in August, because nobody did. Both of you did what this marriage has done for six years, which is watch out for the other one.

What I want to look at is a small phrase in Paul, and it takes a moment because the reason he gives is not the reason anybody expects.

Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.Ephesians 4:25

Notice the for.

He does not say speak truth because lying is wrong, though it is. He does not say speak truth because your neighbor has a right to it, though he does. He says: for we are members one of another.

That is a body word. It is the same picture as a hand and an arm. And what it means is that the truth passes between two people for the same reason that a nerve signal passes along a limb: not out of duty, but because that is what makes one thing one thing.

So a silence between two members is not a moral failing. It is a limb that has gone quiet. And a limb that has gone quiet does not need a lecture, it needs a signal.

You are one thing with the person in that house, and Scripture gives that as the reason a sentence gets spoken rather than as a reward for speaking it. It is written that we speak truth because we are members one of another, which puts the unity underneath the honesty instead of on top of it, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a description of a Friday night kitchen.

You have not been keeping anything from each other, and the passage never once calls a considerate silence a lie. Ephesians 4 is aimed at putting away lying, which is a deliberate act, and a month of mutual deferring is not that, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that distinction available before anybody starts apologizing.

Somebody has to make the first sentence cheap

Here is the part I most want to give you, and it is a small piece of engineering.

The problem is not that the sentence is hard. The problem is that the sentence has been getting more expensive since the thirteenth of August, and it is now carrying a month of not-saying on its back.

So the sentence needs to be built in a way that does not carry that.

Which means it cannot start with an apology. Sorry, I should have said something ages ago hands the month to the other person and asks them to do something with it, and they will immediately hand it back, saying no, no, I saw it too. And then two people are holding the month.

And it cannot start with a question. Have you noticed the light? makes the other one answer for their four weeks first.

It starts with a report about you, in the present tense, with no history attached.

I have noticed the light on the dash.

That is the sentence. It says nothing about time. It accuses nobody, it apologizes for nothing, and it hands over a fact rather than a debt. Anybody can answer it.

You have the right to say a plain thing plainly, and the written word puts the speaking of truth inside a household rather than at a distance from it. Ephesians 4 says speak truth with your neighbor, and the nearest neighbor a married person has is across the table, and the Spirit of God is what makes that sentence ordinary instead of loaded.

And I want to name the sweetest thing in this whole business, because it deserves saying.

Neither of you was protecting yourself. Miriam was protecting a hard week at work. Ari was protecting a wife from being checked up on. Two people spent a month at real cost, each guarding the other, and both were wrong about only one thing, which is that the other one was doing it too.

You were being loved through the whole of that silence, and the passage puts the members inside one body rather than beside each other. Ephesians 4 says we are members one of another, which is a description of what was true in August whether either of you could see it, and His Spirit is the one who makes that visible now.