I Do Not Want To Be That Person

There is a woman in your head and she is the one you are refusing to become.

She is the one who chases. She makes things awkward. She brings up money at the wrong moment and people go quiet when she leaves the room.

And you have organized about fifteen years of your behavior around not being her.

I would like to ask a question about her, because I think she is worth examining rather than obeying.

Where did you actually meet her.

You are not becoming anybody by asking, and one plain sentence has never once turned a woman into the difficult one.

For most women who carry this, she is not a real person at all. She is assembled: a bit of an aunt, a woman at a church who got talked about, something a mother said once about somebody at the school gate.

And the assembled version does something that no real person could ever do. She stands at the end of every possible sentence you might say about money, and she says: if you say that, you become me.

Which is how a woman ends up being owed for six weeks and saying nothing, in order to avoid resembling somebody who does not exist.

Go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone

There is an instruction in Matthew that is unusually specific about how a thing should be raised between two people.

Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. (Matthew 18:15, King James Version)

Go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone.

Go. Tell. That is a direct instruction to raise a thing, privately, with the person it concerns, and it is not offered as one option among several.

You are looking at an instruction to say the thing rather than carry it, and going directly to a person has never once been described there as the difficult option. Matthew 18:15 says go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone, and the Holy Spirit is the one who made it an instruction rather than a permission.

And look at the reason given at the end. Thou hast gained thy brother.

The purpose of the conversation is not to be proved right. It is to keep the relationship, and the raising of the thing is presented as the route to keeping it rather than the risk to it.

You have a verse where saying it plainly is the way the relationship gets kept, and speaking to somebody directly has never once been the thing that lost them. The Holy Spirit is the one who puts the gaining at the end of that sentence, and it is written in Matthew 18:15 with the telling as the means to it.

What that woman actually did

Now let me go back to the woman in your head, because I want to be fair to her.

The real women who got talked about, the ones you assembled her from, were almost never talked about for asking once, plainly, in a message.

They were talked about for something else. For raising it in front of other people. For raising it four times in two weeks. For raising it with an edge on it. Or, most often, for something that had nothing to do with money at all and got attached afterward.

You have built a rule out of cases that do not resemble what you are about to do, and one plain private sentence has never once been the behavior anybody was talked about for. The written word sends a person to speak privately and directly, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates a real pattern from an assembled one.

And there is a second thing, and this one is worth sitting with.

The fear is of becoming somebody. But asking once is not a character. It is an event. Characters are made of hundreds of repetitions, not of one message on a Tuesday.

You are performing one action and not adopting an identity, and a single message has never once been enough to become anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a thing to its actual size, and Matthew 18:15 describes one conversation rather than a way of being.

One plain sentence, today

So the assignment, and there is a piece of it that is aimed straight at the woman in your head.

Send the message asking for it, today, in one plain sentence.

The work, the date, the ask. One line, privately, to the one person, which is exactly the shape that verse describes.

You are able to send one private line today, and a message between two people has never once been a scene. The Spirit of God is the one present in a message sent quietly, and the written word puts the conversation between thee and him alone.

And here is the part aimed at her. Before you send it, read it back and ask one question: is there anything in this that a person could reasonably be annoyed by.

If the answer is no, and it will be, then the woman in your head has nothing to attach to, and send it.

You are able to check a sentence and then trust it, and a message with nothing in it to object to has never once made anybody difficult. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a person a level private sentence, and it is written in Matthew 18:15 that the purpose of the going is to keep the person rather than to win anything.

And if she is still standing there when you have read it back, send it anyway. She has had fifteen years.