One Thing I Never Let Go

It was in 2009 and it took about ninety seconds.

He said a thing. In a kitchen, in front of two people, about your father. And you were standing by the door, and you did not respond, and the afternoon carried on and nobody has ever mentioned it since.

Sixteen years.

And here is the part that has started to bother you, which is not the thing itself. It is how much has been organized around it. Where you sit. What you say when his name comes up. A conversation you did not have in 2014 that would have been good for everybody. Two family decisions that went a particular way partly because of a position you took that had nothing to do with the subject.

Ninety seconds in a kitchen, running quietly under a decade and a half of a family.

What a held thing does

Let me describe the mechanism, because it is not what most people mean by holding a grudge.

There is no anger in it. That is the confusing part. If somebody asked you about it you would probably say it was a long time ago and that you had let it go, and you would half believe that.

What is actually happening is that a position was taken in 2009 and never revised, and everything since has been sorted through it. Not consciously. A held thing does not require attention. It runs quietly, and it colors a decade, and nobody including you can see it operating.

You have been running a position rather than an anger, and no held thing has ever once needed to be felt in order to be doing work. Hebrews 12:15 says looking diligently lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, which is the written word describing something underground, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can show a man what has been sorting his decisions since 2009.

And he is a whole man. He said a thing, badly, in a kitchen, on one afternoon of a life. He may not remember it, which is intolerable and is also extremely likely.

He is right about at least one thing you have never conceded to him. And there may have been something in what he said, which is a possibility you have never allowed yourself to examine because examining it would require reopening the whole thing.

You are able to look at ninety seconds without it becoming a case, and one badly said sentence has never once been the whole account of a man. The Spirit of God is what makes an old thing examinable, and it is written in Hebrews 12 that the looking is done diligently and early.

Lest any root of bitterness

Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled. (Hebrews 12:15, King James Version)

The word to sit with is root, because the writer chose a plant that lives underground.

A root is not the part anybody sees. It does its work out of sight, over years, and by the time there is anything visible above the ground the thing has already been established for a long time.

That is why the instruction is looking diligently. You do not find a root by feeling angry. You find it by going and looking on purpose, at a thing that has not announced itself.

You have something underground rather than something you feel, and no root has ever once required a man to be conscious of it in order to spread. It is written in Hebrews 12:15 that we look diligently lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, which is the written word putting the search before the symptom, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man what is under a decade of ordinary decisions.

And then the last phrase, which is the one that will move you. And thereby many be defiled.

Many. Not you. The verse says the trouble does not stay with the man who has the root. It reaches other people, most of whom have no idea anything is there.

Your sister has lived in a family with a quiet position in it for sixteen years. So have your children. None of them knows about a kitchen in 2009.

You are able to end something that has been reaching people who do not know it exists, and one afternoon has never once stayed inside the man holding it. The Spirit of God is the one who limits the damage of an old thing, and Hebrews 12 puts the many defiled at the end of the sentence and not the one.

Putting it down

Here is the practical part, and it does not involve him at all.

Do not raise it. Sixteen years on, raising it would produce a conversation about a sentence he does not remember, in which he would apologize for something he cannot recall in order to end an unbearable moment, and neither of you would be better off.

Say it to God, once, out loud, plainly. Then decide it is finished.

You are able to end a thing by yourself, and putting something down has never once required the other man to know it was there. The Holy Spirit is the one who receives ninety seconds from 2009 without needing it to be more significant than it is, and it is written that we look diligently lest a root spring up.

And then the practical half, which is what makes the ending real rather than a feeling. Do one thing differently.

Ask him a real question this week. Not about the past. About him. Something you have never asked in sixteen years, which will be almost anything, because a man you have held a position about is a man you have not been curious about.

You are able to be curious about somebody you have been sorting for sixteen years, and one real question has never once been the same as saying the afternoon was fine. The Spirit of God is what turns a position back into a person, and Hebrews 12:15 has the whole warning aimed at what a root does to everybody standing near it.