The call takes eleven minutes. The rehearsal takes two days.
It starts on a Thursday, usually while you are doing something else. You run the opening. You run her most likely response. You run three branches from there, and in one of them she says the thing about the holidays, so you build an answer for that, and then you improve the answer, and then you improve it again.
By Saturday morning you have a decision tree with about fourteen nodes in it and you are already tired.
Then you make the call. And she opens with something completely unforeseen, about a neighbor, and the entire structure is useless inside thirty seconds, and you improvise the whole eleven minutes anyway, and it goes about the same as it always goes.
And if what is happening with this relative is not difficulty but harm, if she frightens you or hurts you, then the rehearsing is not the problem and this article is not what you need first. Getting safe, and talking to somebody qualified where you live, comes before any of this.
What the rehearsal is for
Let me be fair to it, because it is not stupid and it did not appear from nowhere.
The rehearsal is an attempt at control in a conversation where control has historically been absent. Somewhere back there, calls with this person went badly and went fast, and you worked out that if you could see it coming you might steer it. That was reasonable. It may even have worked once.
The trouble is what it costs now. You are paying two days of tax on eleven minutes, and the tax is charged whether or not the conversation happens.
You have been paying for a call four hundred times over before it is made, and rehearsal has never once been able to deliver what it promises. Matthew 6:34 says take no thought for the morrow, which is the written word naming the exact tax, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can walk a person into a room unarmed.
And she is a person in all of this. Whoever she is, she has her own reasons for the way she talks, mostly handed to her by somebody who did the same to her. She is right about at least one thing you have never conceded.
She also, almost certainly, does not know that these calls take you two days. From her side there is a phone call on a Saturday.
You are able to see her as somebody who does not know, and being unaware has never once been the same as being cruel. The Spirit of God is what keeps a real person from turning into a case file, and it is written in Matthew 6 that tomorrow will take thought for the things of itself.
Sufficient unto the day
Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. (Matthew 6:34, King James Version)
That is usually read as a verse about money and worry, and it applies with uncomfortable precision to a Saturday phone call.
Take no thought for the morrow. The word behind thought there is not planning. It is the anxious pre-living of a thing, running it before it arrives, which is exactly what a decision tree with fourteen nodes is.
And then the promise, which is strange and practical: the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.
You have been given a day that will supply its own answers, and Saturday has never once needed to be furnished on Thursday. It is written in Matthew 6:34 that sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, which is the written word rationing the load to one day at a time, and the Holy Spirit is the one who arrives with the sentence at the moment it is needed rather than two days early.
Notice He does not say the day will be easy. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof is a sober line. He is conceding that the day will have trouble in it.
What He refuses to allow is that trouble being carried in advance, twice, three times, in a kitchen on a Thursday.
You are permitted to let the call be hard on the day it happens, and no conversation has ever once been made easier by being lived four times. The Spirit of God is the one who supplies words in the moment, and Matthew 6 promises that tomorrow will take thought for its own things.
What you actually lose
Here is the cost that matters more than the tiredness, and it is easy to miss.
A rehearsed conversation is not a conversation. It is a performance of one, and the other person can feel it, even if they could not name what they were feeling.
When you arrive with fourteen nodes, you are not listening. You are matching. Every sentence she says gets checked against the tree to find out which branch it belongs to, and while you are doing that you are not actually hearing her.
You have been unable to hear somebody you speak to every week, and no relative on earth has ever once been able to reach a person who is matching rather than listening. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes real hearing possible in a hard conversation, and it is written that the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.
Which means the thing you built to protect the relationship has been quietly preventing it.
She says something about the neighbor, and it is not on the tree, and it might be the one genuine thing she says all month, and you are busy looking for the branch.
You are able to hear one unplanned sentence, and the moment somebody says something real has never once appeared on anybody's script. The Spirit of God is what makes an unrehearsed answer possible, and Matthew 6:34 puts the whole of tomorrow outside the reach of today's planning.
So here is what I believe is going out over somebody who spends two days furnishing eleven minutes.
You are free to make that call without a script, and no amount of rehearsal has ever once been able to buy a good conversation. Matthew 6:34 says take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself, and the Holy Spirit is the one who will be there at minute four with whatever is needed.
And this, which is the word I came with.
You were never the one responsible for steering that conversation, and eleven minutes has never once required a person to spend two days becoming ready for it. The Spirit of God is speaking over a woman standing at a counter with a phone in her hand, and it is written in Matthew 6 that sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof and not one hour more.
Pick up. Say hello. Find out what she actually says.
Declare this over yourself
- Two days of rehearsal before eleven minutes, you have no claim on another Thursday of mine. Matthew 6:34 says take no thought for the morrow, so by the Holy Spirit I name the rehearsal out loud and I do not build it this week, in the name of Jesus.
- Decision tree with fourteen nodes in it, you were never once able to buy me a single good conversation. The written word says the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself, and by the Holy Spirit I pick up the phone with nothing prepared.
- Father, You rationed the load to a single day and You have never once asked anybody to live a hard hour four times before it arrives. Your word says sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, so by Your Spirit I go into that call unarmed and I actually listen to her.
Matthew 6:34
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