I Have Been Dreading It Since August

It has been in your chest since August and it is not until December.

That is four months of a room you are not in. Four months of a version of the afternoon that has not happened, running quietly underneath ordinary days, and by now you know the whole thing: what gets said, who says it, what you will be feeling by three o'clock.

And here is the thing about that four month rehearsal. It has already made you tired, and it has already decided how the day is going to go.

Because a person who has run a fight three hundred times walks into a room ready for one. And a room can feel that, and rooms respond to it, and a great deal of what you dread has been arriving partly because you brought it with you in a bag.

That is not blame. That is machinery, and machinery can be turned off.

Bracing is not preparing

Let me separate two things that feel identical from the inside.

Preparing is thinking about a real thing in a bounded way and then setting it down. Bracing is holding a state in your body continuously, and it has no off switch and no end point, and it does not improve your performance in the room by one percent.

Everything you actually need for that afternoon, you will have on the day. The bracing is not building any of it. It is spending it in advance.

You have been paying for December since August, and no amount of bracing has ever once been able to make a person readier than they already are. Romans 12:18 says as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men, which is the written word putting a limit on what is yours, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can take a body out of a held state before the door opens.

And the person you are braced against is real. Whoever it is, they have their own reasons for the way they are at gatherings, mostly handed to them by somebody who did the same. They are right about at least one thing you have never conceded.

They are also, most likely, not planning anything. Very few people at family gatherings arrive with a strategy. Most of them are just being themselves too loudly in a room that is too warm.

You are able to walk toward somebody who is not plotting, and thirty years of a pattern has never once meant a person is preparing it deliberately. The Spirit of God is what removes an enemy from a room where there was only ever a relative, and it is written in Romans 12 that we live peaceably as much as lieth in us.

As much as lieth in you

If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. (Romans 12:18, King James Version)

There are two qualifiers in that sentence and Paul puts them both in on purpose, and they are the most merciful thing in the verse.

If it be possible. He concedes at the front that it may not be. That is a Bible verse acknowledging, in advance, that some rooms cannot be made peaceful by anybody in them.

And then: as much as lieth in you. Your portion. The part that is inside your own hands, and not one inch past it.

You have been given a portion rather than a result, and no reader of that verse has ever once been made responsible for how a whole room turns out. It is written in Romans 12:18 that peace is required only as much as lieth in you, which is the written word measuring out the assignment, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries the part that is not yours.

Sit with what that removes. You are not responsible for whether your uncle says the thing. You are not responsible for whether two people who have not spoken get through the afternoon. You are not responsible for the temperature of a room with fourteen people in it.

You are responsible for what lies in you. That is a small, clear, achievable assignment, and it is the only one you have been given.

You are carrying an assignment you can actually complete, and God has never once handed anybody the peace of a room that fourteen people are making. The Spirit of God is the one who holds the other thirteen portions, and Romans 12 puts the whole instruction inside the phrase as much as lieth in you.

What lies in you on the day

Here is the practical shape of your portion, and it is short.

It is your own tone. It is whether you answer a hard sentence with a soft one. It is whether you stay at the table or take yourself to the kitchen for two minutes. It is what time you leave.

That is the list. It does not include anybody else's behavior and it never did.

You are able to complete your whole assignment by four o'clock, and a portion this size has never once required anybody else to cooperate with it. The Holy Spirit is the one who supplies a soft answer at the moment a hard one is loaded, and it is written that as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.

And the leaving time belongs on that list, which is why it is the thing to do this week.

A gathering with no end is a gathering you have to endure. A gathering that ends at four is a gathering you attend. It is the same room, the same people and the same uncle, and one of them is survivable and one of them has been costing you four months a year.

You are permitted to decide when your afternoon finishes, and leaving at a time you chose has never once been the same as losing an argument. The Spirit of God is what makes an ordinary departure ordinary, and Romans 12:18 leaves everything outside your portion in hands that are not yours.