I Can Name The Day Exactly

You can name the day. Not the year, the day. And nobody in this family has any idea which one it is.

That is a strange thing to be carrying and I do not think you have ever put it into words, so let me try.

There have been about seventy years of days in this family. Weddings, births, four houses, two funerals, the holidays somebody paid a lot for, the Christmases everybody remembers.

And there is one afternoon, which was not any of those, which is the one. You know the weather. You know what was said and who said it and where everybody was standing. It has not faded in fifty years while a great many larger things have.

And you have never told a single person about it.

Not because it is secret. Because it does not survive being said. It is an afternoon in which almost nothing happened, and every time you have imagined telling it, you have heard how it would sound, and you have not.

Let me tell you why it is worth telling anyway, and then let me make it as easy as I can, because this is one of the few things on this site that will only get harder.

A book of remembrance was written

There is a verse in Malachi about people talking to each other and about a book, and both halves of it are for you.

Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name. (Malachi 3:16, King James Version)

You have a verse in the written word where somebody is writing down what people say to each other, and no ordinary afternoon has ever once been too small to have been entered in it. Malachi 3:16 has the LORD listening to people talking and a book of remembrance written from it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that specific to a woman with one unspoken day in her.

Look at the sequence, because the order is the whole thing. They spake often one to another. Then the LORD hearkened, and heard it. Then a book was written.

The writing comes from the speaking. Nothing gets into that book that was not first said out loud between people.

You are able to speak it and let it be entered, and no thought you have kept to yourself for fifty years has once been able to get into that book on its own. It is written that they spake often one to another and that a book was written from what was heard, which makes the speaking the first step, and the Spirit of God is what moves a woman from remembering to saying.

Now, I am not going to tell you that your afternoon is lost unless you speak. God has it; He hears more than what gets said. But this verse describes something that happens when people talk to each other, and it puts the record on the far side of the conversation rather than on the near side.

And notice who is doing the talking. Not preachers. Not anybody official. They that feared the LORD, talking to each other, often, about whatever they talked about.

You are the kind of person that verse is describing, and no lack of anything remarkable has once put you outside the company it names. The Holy Spirit is the one who counts ordinary conversation between two people as the material of a written record, and Malachi 3 has heaven listening in on it.

It will not survive being said, and it should be said anyway

Now the practical part, and I want to deal with the actual obstacle rather than around it.

The obstacle is that it will sound like nothing. And that is correct. It will.

What comes out will be something like: it was a Tuesday, and we walked down to the bottom of the field, and your grandfather said something about the gate, and I have thought about it every year since. And the person listening will not receive what is in you. They cannot. In you sits fifty years of that afternoon, and they get eleven seconds of description.

That is a real loss and I am not going to pretend it is not.

You are able to tell it knowing it will not land the way it sits in you, and no gap between those two has once been a reason to keep it. The Spirit of God is what gives a person the courage to say a small thing badly, and it is written that the book was written from what was spoken rather than from what was felt.

But here is what actually transfers, and it is not the afternoon. What transfers is the fact that there is one. That a woman who has lived seventy years and seen weddings and births and everything else has one Tuesday she has thought about every year, and that it was nothing much.

That is enormous to a young person. It rearranges what they think a life is made of. And it does not require them to feel your afternoon, only to know it exists.

You are able to hand over the fact of it rather than the feeling of it, and that has never once been the smaller half of what you have. It is written that the LORD hearkened and heard it, which is about the saying rather than about how well it was said, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries the part a listener could not have received.

And there is a second thing, which is the reason for the urgency I have not hidden. You are the only person who knows which day it was. When you go, it goes, and this family will have a full account of the big days and no idea that the real one was a Tuesday in a field.

Tell one of them, and say what happened

So here is the assignment, and it is one person rather than a room.

Tell one of them which day it was. And say what happened in it.

One person, and pick the one who will sit still, which is usually not the one you would choose for something important. It is usually whichever grandchild asks you questions.

You are able to tell one person rather than the whole family, and one has never once been too few for a thing like this. Malachi 3:16 has people speaking one to another rather than addressing a gathering, and the Spirit of God is with a woman on a sofa telling one child something.

And say what happened in it, which means the facts. Not what it meant to you, and not why it matters, because that part cannot be transferred and trying will make it worse.

Say: it was a Tuesday in the September your mother was four. We walked to the bottom of the field. This is what the weather was doing. This is what your grandfather said. And that is the day I have thought about most in my life.

You are able to give them the facts and let the meaning go untranslated, and no version of that has ever once been you failing to explain yourself. It is written that they spake one to another and a book of remembrance was written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when an old woman says the plain details of an afternoon out loud.

Then stop. Do not check whether they understood. Do not say I know it sounds like nothing. That sentence is you apologizing for the most important day of your life, and it will teach them to hear it as nothing.

Say it plainly, as a fact, and let the silence afterward be theirs.