Monday Morning At The School Gate

It is Monday and you are standing at the gate again.

Somebody is describing where they went. Somebody else is asking questions about it. It is friendly. Nobody is performing. It is nine in the morning and everybody is holding a coffee.

And there is a thing happening in your chest that has no business being there, and you have been managing it for four Septembers.

It is not envy. You have looked at it closely enough to know that. You do not want their week. You are pleased for them and it is not complicated.

It is shame. And the specific shape of it is this: you feel, standing there, that something is being found out about you. That the conversation is quietly establishing who provides and who does not, and that you are on the wrong side of it, and that your own children are twelve feet away and part of the evidence.

Nobody at that gate is doing that. That is the thing I want to establish today, because it is not a small correction. You are standing in a courtroom that does not exist, waiting for a verdict nobody is issuing.

They looked unto him, and were not ashamed

There is a line in the thirty fourth Psalm about faces, and I have never needed a verse more physically than this one.

They looked unto him, and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed. (Psalm 34:5, King James Version)

You have a promise in the written word about your actual face, and no gateway on any Monday has ever once had the authority to change it. Psalm 34:5 puts the not being ashamed in the faces of people who looked at God rather than in their circumstances, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does that in a man's body while he is standing somewhere holding a coffee.

Notice how physical it is. Faces. Not attitudes, not self esteem. The Psalm is describing what happened to people's actual expressions, and it names the direction they were looking when it happened.

They looked unto him. And were lightened. That is a sequence and the order matters, because shame is not fought by argument. It is fought by direction of gaze.

You are able to look somewhere other than at the conversation, and turning your attention has never once been you pretending it is not happening. It is written that the faces were not ashamed after the looking rather than before it, which is why the remedy is a direction and not an effort, and the Spirit of God is what turns a man's face without anybody at the gate noticing.

And the word lightened is doing something. Lifted. Made brighter. It is the opposite of what a face does when somebody asks what you did this summer.

I am not offering you a technique. I am telling you the Psalm says shame comes off a face, in public, at the moment somebody looks at God rather than at the room.

You are not stuck with the face you have been wearing on Mondays, and four Septembers of it has never once made it permanent. The Holy Spirit is the one who lightens a face at nine in the morning, and Psalm 34 records it happening to people in a crowd rather than in private.

Nobody at that gate is a judge

Now the practical part, and it is about who you think is in that conversation.

Ask yourself what would actually happen if you said, plainly, we did not go anywhere this year.

I will tell you what happens, because it is boring. Somebody says something ordinary. The subject moves. Nobody thinks about it again. Half of them did not go anywhere either and have their own version of your chest thing, and one or two of them borrowed money to do what they did and have not told their wives how much.

You are able to say the plain thing and watch nothing happen, and the size of your dread has never once been a measure of the risk. The Spirit of God is what gives a man the nerve to test a fear once rather than manage it for another year, and Psalm 34:5 has faces lifted in public rather than in hiding.

And here is the part about your children, because that is where this actually hurts. You believe they are standing there absorbing a ranking.

They are not. They are twelve feet away and thinking about the day. Children at a gate at nine in the morning are not conducting a comparison of household incomes. They will absorb something from you at that gate, but it will not be what you did in July. It will be what your face does when somebody asks.

You have children who are learning something from your face rather than from your summer, and none of that has ever once depended on where this family went. It is written that they looked and were lightened and were not ashamed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that specific to a man standing where his own children can see him.

That is either bad news or the best news in this article, depending on the day. Bad, because the thing you cannot control is the thing they are reading. Good, because the thing they are reading is available to you on Monday and does not cost anything.

You are able to give them the thing they are actually watching for, and it has never once been a week away. Psalm 34:5 ties the unashamed face to the looking rather than to what a man has, and the Spirit of God is present in a gateway at nine in the morning.

One true sentence at the gate

So here is the assignment, and it is designed to be small and slightly frightening.

Stand in that gateway on Monday and say one true sentence about your own week.

Not a confession. Not an explanation of your finances. Not a joke that gets in first so nobody else can. One ordinary true sentence, said in the same tone everybody else is using.

We stayed home this year. Or, we did not go anywhere, we did a lot of days out. Or, we went to my brother's for four days and I slept on a couch.

You are able to say a true sentence in your ordinary voice, and telling it plainly has never once been the same thing as making an announcement. The Holy Spirit is the one who steadies a man's voice on the first Monday he does this, and it is written that the faces of those who looked were not ashamed.

Here is the reason it has to be out loud and not just an attitude adjustment. As long as you have never said it, you are carrying an untested belief about what happens when you do. And that belief has been growing for four years without ever meeting any evidence.

Say it once. Watch what happens. Almost certainly nothing happens, and then the four years is over.

You are able to end four years of this on one Monday, and one plain sentence has never once been too small to do it. The Spirit of God is what makes a man brave for four seconds, and Psalm 34 has the shame coming off in the middle of a crowd.