The Flinch You Cannot Explain

The spoon hits the floor first, and then there is the sound of nobody saying anything.

It is Sunday, six in the evening, and she has been at the counter twenty minutes topping green beans into a yellow bowl. The tap is running because she turned it on to rinse them and forgot. The radio is telling somebody tomorrow's weather in an agreeable voice.

He comes in from the yard talking about the fence, the same panel, the third year running. Mid-sentence he reaches past her shoulder for the salt on the shelf above her head, and his arm goes up fast, the way an arm goes up when nothing is happening.

She ducks.

Not a small flinch. A full duck, chin to shoulder, one hand up flat between her face and his arm, and the wooden spoon out of her fingers onto the tile.

Half a second, the whole of it. Then his arm is back down with the salt in it and his mouth open in the middle of a sentence about a fence panel.

And then his face. That is the part she will still be carrying at eleven tonight, long after the beans and dishes. Blank first, and then something worse. Sorry. Sorry, I did not mean. And she says it is fine, and picks up the spoon, and the tap is still running, and she says it again. It is fine. I do not know why I did that.

Which is true. She does not.

She knows what she would say if she could. It is not you. It has never once been you. Twenty-two years and you have never lifted a hand and never would, and my body does not appear to have been told.

But saying that out loud means opening a door she keeps shut, and there is a bowl of beans and the weather on the radio and it is Sunday. So she says it is fine, and he sets the salt on the counter the way you put something down in a room where somebody is asleep.

And the evening goes on. And it is fine. And something in that kitchen has moved an inch, and neither of them will mention it.

That is you, with the tap still running.

I am not going to ask you what happened. Not when, not who, not how long, and nothing here needs it. You can keep every part of it exactly where it is.

What I will say, before anything else, is this. Your body ducking is not a failure of faith. It is not a verdict on the man with the salt in his hand, and it is not you accusing anybody. It is a body that learned something once and kept the lesson, the way a body keeps a scar, without asking permission.

The one Person you never have to explain this to

There is a verse for the woman at the counter, and the remarkable thing is what it does not ask her for.

Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.Psalm 103:13-14

Frame is a builder's word: what a thing is made of and how it was put together, the joins, the load-bearing places, where it gives. David is not saying God knows about us in a general way. He is saying God knows the construction, and never needed it described.

Hear the mercy in the order of that. He knows your frame before you explain your frame. You have never once had to get the words right for God, or find the beginning of the story, and no line in Psalm 103 makes His tenderness wait on your account of yourself. His Spirit searches the deep things, and has been there the whole time, on the inside of what you cannot say.

And pitieth is not pity as we use the word now, from above and slightly embarrassed. It is the word for what happens in a father's chest when he sees his own child hurt. Not distaste, not patience running low. A father moving toward, at speed.

That is what is aimed at you in the half second after you duck. Not a raised eyebrow, not a note taken. You are pitied in the old sense, loved at the exact place you are most ashamed of, and the word says so plainly, and His Spirit does not stand back from a body doing what it does.

Now three things I will not do, because they have been done to people in your position for years and do not help.

I will not hand you not-flinching as a target. Set out tonight to stop ducking and by Wednesday there is simply one more thing to fail at. The flinch is not the sin here and never was. It is allowed to stay, and to stay for years.

I will not tell you that forgiveness comes first and peace after. That trade is not in this psalm and it is not in the gospel. Forgiveness is its own country and you may travel there in your own time, or not at this hour. Peace is not held behind a gate you pay at.

And I will not suggest any of this is your fault. Not the flinch, not what taught it to you, not the half second in the kitchen.

Here is what is true instead, and true tonight whether or not you can feel it. You are known all the way down, joins and load-bearing places and all, and the knowing is a father's, not an inspector's. Psalm 103:14 says He remembers what you are made of, and the same Spirit who raised Christ is at home in a body that flinches and has never once considered leaving it.

There are people trained to sit with a body that does this, and going to one is an ordinary good thing, like seeing a doctor about a knee. It is not a failure of trust, and no version of faith asks you to carry this alone.

And if you want something to say to the man with the salt in his hand, you do not need the story for it. Four words will do: it is not you. Then, if you have them, two more: it is old. He is not owed an explanation. It is a hand held out across a half second, and it is enough.

You are not a difficult person to love. You are a person whose body kept a receipt, the God who wrote Psalm 103 is not embarrassed by it, and His Spirit is the one at work here, at whatever pace He chooses, never on a schedule you have to meet.