My Mother Would Be Ashamed

She has been gone eleven years and she has an opinion about this.

That is what it feels like. You took the job, and somewhere in the first week the sentence arrived, and it arrived in her voice, and it has been running ever since.

She would be ashamed.

I want to go carefully here, because this is grief as much as it is work, and articles that are brisk about that do damage.

You are being judged by a voice that is not hers, and a memory of somebody has never once been the same as the person.

Here is the first thing, and it is a genuine question rather than a device.

What would she actually have said.

Not the voice. Her. The woman who raised you, who knew what a hard month looked like, who had presumably done a few things herself that she had not planned on.

Because there is a version of your mother who would have said, well thank God there is work. And you know that version. She existed. She said things like that about other people.

The voice in your head is not running her whole character. It is running one narrow strand of her, probably something she said when you were about fourteen, and it has been amplified by eleven years of you not being able to ask her anything.

The LORD looketh on the heart

There is a moment where a prophet is looking at a row of impressive men and is told, plainly, that he is using the wrong instrument.

But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7, King James Version)

Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.

And notice that this is said about a good man. Eliab was not a fraud. He was tall and impressive and genuinely the obvious choice.

The verse is not exposing a liar. It is saying that even accurate outward information is the wrong information for this purpose.

You are being looked at by somebody who is not using the outward measure at all, and the appearance of a job has never once been the thing God was reading. 1 Samuel 16:7 says for the LORD looketh on the heart, and the Holy Spirit is the one who said that out loud to a prophet who had got it wrong.

And there is a small mercy in that verse that I would not want you to miss. Samuel got it wrong.

A prophet, in the middle of doing what God had told him to do, looked at the wrong thing and had to be corrected.

You are not the only one who has read a situation by its surface, and being corrected about what matters has never once been a disgrace in that account. The Holy Spirit is the one who does the correcting, and it is written in 1 Samuel 16:7 to a man who was genuinely trying to do it right.

Whose voice is it

Now let me come back to the voice, because that is the actual object in this article.

A voice that belongs to somebody who has died is a strange thing. It cannot be updated. It cannot be argued with. It cannot surprise you, which is the thing a living person does constantly.

So what you have is not your mother. It is a recording, made by you, out of pieces of her, and it has been playing without any of the corrections a living woman would have made to it.

You are being addressed by a recording and not by a person, and a voice that cannot answer back has never once been the same as somebody's actual opinion. The written word says plainly that the outward reading is the wrong reading, and the Spirit of God is the one who tells a person what they are actually listening to.

And here is the thing I would most like to put in front of you, and I offer it rather than insisting on it.

The women in your family worked. Somewhere back there, two generations or three, there are women who did exactly the kind of work you are doing now, and they did it without any of this, because in their time nobody had told them there was anything to be ashamed of.

You are standing in a line of women who did plain work, and a job your grandmother would have recognized has never once been a fall from anywhere. The Holy Spirit is the one who puts a longer line in view, and 1 Samuel 16:7 refuses the outward measure in favor of what is actually in a person.

Take it, and say it in the kitchen

So the assignment, and there is a second part for you specifically.

Take the shift, and tell one person plainly what you are doing and why. 1 Samuel 16:7 refuses the outward reading of a person, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present while a woman says out loud what she has taken on.

Tell somebody who knew her. That is the part that matters. A sister, an aunt, a woman from the old church.

And ask them one question afterward. What would Mum have said about this.

You may get an answer that surprises you. Women who knew your mother have information about her that you, as her child, do not have and never had.

You are able to ask one question of somebody who knew her, and a child's recording of a parent has never once been the whole of what that woman was. The Spirit of God is the one who brings a truer account through another person, and the written word corrects a prophet's reading through a plain sentence.

And if the answer is hard, or if nobody can give you one, then say it anyway, out loud, in your own kitchen, with the photograph on the shelf. I am doing this work and it is honest and I am not ashamed of it.

You are able to say one sentence out loud in your own house, and words said in an empty kitchen have never once been words that nobody heard. The Holy Spirit is the one in that room, and it is written in 1 Samuel 16:7 that the looking God does goes past the surface entirely.