The Car Is Easier Than The Bank

Emilio has a set of reasons and they are all true and not one of them is the reason.

The car still runs, and the garage said so at its last service. True. Something newer would mean a payment. True. He does not drive far. True, mostly. And there is no point changing it in the middle of the year. That one is not really true but nobody has ever pushed on it.

He has given those four reasons, in various combinations, for about two years.

The reason is that changing the car means somebody looking at his credit, and his credit has a bad stretch in it from four years ago, and he has not looked at it since, and he does not know what it says now.

He has never said that sentence to anybody. Not to his wife, who knows about the bad stretch because she was there. Not to his brother. Not out loud in a car on his own.

And here is what makes this worth writing about rather than just noticing.

The four reasons are load bearing now. He has said them so many times that they have become the account of the situation, in his household, in his own head, and in every conversation about it.

Which means the actual obstacle has never been examined by anybody, including him.

It might be smaller than he thinks. Four years is a long time and things move off. It might be exactly as bad as he fears. Nobody knows, because the one thing that would settle it is the one thing that has never been done.

And in the meantime a man who could have found out in about eleven minutes, for nothing, on a phone, has spent two years managing a set of reasons.

His wife said in the spring, "It's not the car, is it?"

And Emilio said, "What?"

And she said, "Nothing," and left it, and she was not wrong and both of them knew it.

Four true reasons, none of them the reason

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

I am not going to tell you what to do about your credit, because that is a matter for somebody who knows your circumstances and it is not a subject this site handles.

And I am not going to tell you to change the car. It might be right to keep it. Half your reasons are perfectly good on their own merits and would stand up in any conversation.

What I want to do is get the real thing named, because a thing that has never been named cannot be looked at, and a thing that cannot be looked at governs everything from behind.

You have been given words for the thing you have not named, and Scripture says the Spirit helpeth our infirmities when we know not what to pray for. Romans 8 has Him making intercession where a person cannot find the sentence, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that assistance reach a man who has been avoiding one phone call for months.

Here is the verse, and it is a man doing exactly that.

The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?Psalm 27:1

Now, most people read that as confidence, and it is. But notice the structure of it, because David does something in that sentence that is easy to miss.

He names the fear.

Twice. Whom shall I fear. Of whom shall I be afraid. He does not pretend there is nothing there. He puts the word in his own mouth, out loud, in a psalm, twice in one verse.

And he puts it next to the thing that settles it, in the same sentence, in the same breath.

That is the pattern. Name the thing, and name what it stands against, together. Not: refuse to say the word. Not: manage it with four reasons.

You are not being cowardly about this, and Scripture has a man name his own fear out loud twice in a single verse. It is written the Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear, which puts the naming and the answer in the same breath, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a workable pattern for a man in a parked car.

You have four true reasons standing where one honest sentence belongs. Psalm 27 sets the fear beside the strength rather than in place of it, and the Holy Spirit is what makes naming a thing an act of faith rather than an admission.

Say it once, to nobody

Here is the practical thing, and it is smaller than it sounds and it is not a conversation.

Say it out loud, once, alone, in the car, in plain words.

I'm not changing the car because I don't want anybody looking at my credit.

That is it. Not to his wife. Not to his brother. Not to anybody. To the inside of a parked car.

And here is why that is the whole assignment, and why it is not a first step toward anything.

A reason that has never been said out loud stays exactly the size it was on the day it went in. Four years ago it was enormous, because four years ago it was current, and it has been sitting in the dark at that size ever since, unrevised, while everything around it changed.

Saying it out loud does one thing: it puts a date on it. It makes it a sentence from today rather than a feeling from then. And a sentence from today can be looked at, and a feeling from then cannot.

He may still not want to check his credit. That is genuinely allowed and this message is not sneaking up on him. But there is a difference between a man who has decided not to look at something and a man who has arranged four reasons so that he never has to notice he is not looking.

You have permission to name the real thing without doing anything about it yet, and no verse anywhere requires a man to solve a fear in the same hour he says it. Psalm 27 has David naming the fear and then spending eleven more verses in the middle of it, and the Spirit of God is what makes saying it out loud a complete act on its own.

And I want to say the tender half, because the spring conversation is what will stay with him.

His wife already knows. She said so, in four words, and then let it go, because she is a woman who does not corner people.

So the four reasons are not protecting anybody. They are not even working. The person they were built for saw through them in the spring and said nothing, out of love, and has been carrying the same silence he has ever since.

You were never hiding this from her, and Scripture puts the naming out loud as the ordinary thing rather than the brave thing. It is written that the Lord is the strength of my life, which is the same verse David uses to hold a named fear in place, and His Spirit is what makes a plain sentence between two people who both already know it into a relief rather than a confession.