That Is Just How It Sounds

The first time Junie asked, Wanda gave a real answer.

She said, "I don't know, honey. Old car."

That was in May and it was true and it was fine.

The second time was two weeks later, and Junie asked in that flat way children have when they are checking whether the first answer is still operating, and Wanda said, "That's just how it sounds."

And the thing about that sentence is that it worked so well.

It closed the subject without lying, because a car does sound like something and this is how this one sounds. It did not worry anybody. It let a woman get four children and a bag of groceries the eleven miles home without a conversation she had no answer for.

So she said it again in June. And in July, twice. And by the end of August, Wanda estimates, about eleven times.

Now here is what has happened to that sentence over four months, and it is not what happened to the car.

The first time it was an answer. By the fourth time it was a habit. And somewhere around the eighth or ninth time it quietly turned into something else, which is a small formal arrangement between a mother and her children in which everybody agrees not to bring it up.

Because the children have stopped asking. That is the part Wanda noticed in the last week of August. Elijah, who is eleven and misses nothing, was in the front seat when it did the sound, and he looked at the dashboard, and then he looked out the window, and he did not say anything.

He has been trained. Not deliberately, and not harshly. But a boy who has heard the same eight words nine times has learned what this household does with that noise, and what it does is not mention it.

And Wanda, driving with the sound going and four children saying nothing about it, felt something she could not name for about a mile, and then she named it, and it was not guilt. It was loneliness.

An answer that closes a subject is not always an answer

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

I am not going to guess what that noise is. I have not been in that car, I could not tell you the first thing about the engine, and a woman at a distance guessing at somebody's sound is worth nothing at all. And if that car ever does anything on the road that frightens you, with children in it or without, this whole message stands aside and it goes to somebody qualified that day.

What I want to look at is what the sentence has become, because the sentence started honest and did not stay that way, and nobody did anything wrong in between.

Let me put David's line down, because he asks for something very odd in it.

Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.Psalm 51:6

Two places named there. The inward parts and the hidden part.

He is not talking about lying. He is talking about the difference between what a person says on the surface and what is actually true further in. And he says God wants the truth in there, in the place the surface never reaches.

Now, that verse is usually preached about sin, and it is in a psalm about sin. But look at the mechanism, because the mechanism is bigger than the occasion. A person can go a long time saying true-enough things on the outside while a different and truer thing sits unsaid further in, and God's interest is in the second one.

That's just how it sounds is a true-enough thing. The truer thing, further in, is I don't know what that is, and I haven't been able to face finding out.

You are not a liar, and Scripture puts the desire for truth in the inward parts as an invitation rather than as an accusation about the outward ones. It is written that God desires truth in the inward parts and makes a person know wisdom in the hidden part, which is an offer of teaching rather than a charge of deceit, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a safe place to go.

You have been holding a household steady with eight words, and no part of the written word calls that dishonesty. Psalm 51 asks for truth to come into the inward part rather than for the outward part to be punished, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that direction of travel a kindness.

What the children actually learned

Here is the part I most want to hand you, and it is about Elijah looking out the window.

Children do not learn what we tell them. They learn what we do with things.

He did not learn that the car is fine. He is eleven, he is not a fool, and he can hear it too. What he learned is what happens in this family when there is a thing we cannot fix: we say a sentence about it, and then we all look out the window.

And that is worth being careful about, because that is a skill he will carry into a great many rooms in his life.

But now hear the other half, and it is the better half.

The exact same mechanism runs the other way. If he hears his mother say, one time, I don't actually know what that is, and I'm going to find out, then what he learns is different. He learns that in this family a thing you do not understand can be said out loud and then handled.

That is a bigger inheritance than a quiet car.

You have permission to say a truer thing to your own children, and Scripture never once asks a mother to protect her household from her own uncertainty. Psalm 51 has a man asking God to bring the truth into the hidden part where the household cannot see, and the Spirit of God is what makes an honest sentence in a moving car a form of teaching.

And let me say the tender thing, because I think it is the real reason.

The reason the sentence exists is not that they were not meant to know about the car. It is that they were not meant to know their mother was worried. And it has been carried alone, in the driver's seat, eleven miles at a time, so that four children could ride in a car where everything was fine.

That is love. It is also the loneliest possible way to do a Tuesday.

You were never meant to carry a thing alone in the front seat, and no verse anywhere makes a mother the only person in the house permitted to be uncertain. Ecclesiastes 4 says two are better than one because they have a good reward for their labor, which puts a second person inside the arrangement rather than outside it, and His Spirit is what makes saying a true sentence out loud an act of strength.