I Did Not Go To The Wedding

You had a reason and it was a real one at the time.

There was something going on, and there was a thing about the arrangements, and if you laid the whole of it out now most people would understand about eighty percent of it.

And you did not go.

That was eleven years ago. And in eleven years, at every gathering, in every room, that fact has been present and nobody has ever said one word about it. Not him, not her, not your sister, not once.

You have got very good at being warm in those rooms. And every so often, usually about four in the morning, you know exactly what is sitting under the warmth.

And you have been to everything since. Every christening, every birthday, the sixtieth, the thing at the hall. Reliable for eleven years, always bringing something, always staying later than most people.

None of it has touched the one day, and that has been clear all along, and so, you suspect, has everybody else known it.

Why nobody has mentioned it

Let me name what the silence is actually doing, because it looks like grace and it is not quite grace.

Nobody has raised it because raising it would be a scene. That is all. The family made a collective decision, without discussing it, that this was one of those things, and everybody has behaved beautifully around it for over a decade.

And the effect of that is not that it went away. The effect is that it has been sealed. It cannot be discussed, which means it cannot be resolved, which means it stays exactly the size it was on the day.

You have had something sealed rather than forgiven, and no silence in a family has ever once been able to finish a thing. Psalm 32:5 says I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid, which is the written word describing the opposite move, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an old thing sayable after eleven years.

And he is a whole man in this, whoever the one who married in was. He has been in rooms with you for eleven years knowing you were not there on his day.

He has probably decided it was not personal, or has decided it was, and either way he has never once been able to check, because nobody has ever mentioned it. He is right about at least one thing you have never conceded.

You are able to end somebody else's eleven years of not knowing, and one sentence has never once required a family to hold a conversation about anything. The Spirit of God is what makes a private thing sayable, and it is written in Psalm 32 that the hiding was what kept it heavy.

I acknowledged my sin unto thee

I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah. (Psalm 32:5, King James Version)

Read the verse before it, because it is what makes this psalm useful rather than pious.

When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. David says that the silence itself did the damage. Not the thing. The keeping of it.

That is a physical description. Bones waxing old. He is saying that a sealed thing ages a person.

You have been carrying the sealing rather than the thing, and no unsaid matter has ever once stayed the same size while it was being kept. It is written in Psalm 32:5 that mine iniquity have I not hid, which is the written word ending a silence rather than a fault, and the Holy Spirit is the one who was present for all eleven years of four in the morning.

And notice what happens the moment it is said. Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Immediately. There is no interval in that verse. The acknowledging and the forgiving are in the same sentence with nothing between them.

The delay was never on God's side. It was eleven years of a sealed room.

You are able to end an eleven year silence in one sentence, and the forgiving has never once been the part that was waiting. The Spirit of God is the one who has been ready the whole time, and Psalm 32 puts the acknowledging and the forgiving in the same breath.

Saying it once

Here is the practical part, and it is short on purpose.

Say it to God first. All of it, including the eighty percent that people would understand, and the twenty percent that they would not, which is the part that has been at four in the morning.

Then, if you decide to, say one sentence to him.

You are able to say a short sentence about an old thing, and one plain acknowledgment has never once required an explanation attached. The Holy Spirit is the one who supplies eleven words after eleven years, and it is written that I acknowledged my sin unto thee and mine iniquity have I not hid.

It is not a speech and it does not include your reasons. I have always been sorry that I was not there.

That is it. No account of the arrangements. No reference to what was going on at the time, because a reason offered eleven years later reads as a defense and he would have to receive it as one.

And then do not wait for a response, and do not check his face. Say it and let the moment pass and go and do something else.

You are able to say it without requiring anything back, and an acknowledgment has never once needed to be received in order to have been made. The Spirit of God is what holds somebody through the four seconds afterward, and Psalm 32:5 puts the whole weight on the not hiding.