I Bought The Cheapest One

It was a Thursday and she asked over the fence.

Perfectly innocent question. Which one did you get. And in the half second before the answer came out, something happened.

You were vague.

Not a lie. Nothing anybody could point to. Just slightly less specific than you would have been about anything else in your life, and then a small move to another subject, which was also nothing anybody would notice.

And you have thought about that half second since. Several times. More than the machine has been thought about.

Because in that half second the price had already been read as a summary of something, and the vagueness was a small attempt to keep the summary private.

So let us deal with that, because the machine is running and washing everything perfectly well and the half second is the part still doing damage.

You are a woman who bought what she could afford and not a woman who settled, and the price of a machine has never once been a statement about the person who paid it.

I have learned, in whatsoever state I am

There is a sentence of Paul's that everybody quotes and almost nobody reads slowly.

Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. (Philippians 4:11, King James Version)

I have learned.

That is the word doing everything in that verse. Learned. Which means he did not have it, and then he had it, and there was a process in between, and the process took time and had unpleasant stretches in it.

Contentment is not presented as a temperament some people are born with. It is presented as a skill that a particular man acquired over a particular life.

You are inside the learning rather than failing at the having, and a woman who felt the sting of a price has never once been a woman who lacks something everybody else was born with. The Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody replaying a half second at a fence, and Philippians 4:11 says learned and puts a process in front of the state.

And look at what Paul learned. In whatsoever state I am.

Whatsoever. Both directions. He says elsewhere in that passage that he has learned how to be abased and how to abound, and both of them had to be learned, which is a strange and useful thing to notice.

Having plenty is also a state that requires learning. The learning is not remedial education for people who are short.

You are not being taught something that only people in your situation need, and contentment in plenty has never once been easier to learn than contentment in less. The written word puts both states in the same sentence and says both were learned, and the Spirit of God is the one who teaches it in whichever one a person is standing in.

And notice the first clause, which is almost always skipped: not that I speak in respect of want.

He goes out of his way to say he is not complaining. He is not making a case about his conditions. The verse is a report on a man rather than a comment on his circumstances.

You are able to speak about what you paid without it being a complaint, and a plain fact about a price has never once been the same thing as asking for sympathy. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman say a number without it meaning anything more, and Philippians 4:11 separates the report from the want deliberately.

A price is a fact about a week

Something practical, and it is about what a number actually is.

The price of that machine is a fact about a machine and about a month. It is what a household had available when a thing failed, which is arithmetic about a particular week and nothing else.

It is not a summary of a marriage, or of the work you do, or of the choices made over twenty years, or of how carefully this house is run. It cannot be, because it does not contain any of that information.

You have been treating a number as a verdict and it has no such authority, and what a household could find in one week has never once been a report on the whole of a life. The written word puts the state a person is in and the person themselves in two separate categories, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps them separate at a fence on a Thursday.

Now the second thing, and it is about what the vagueness cost.

Vagueness is expensive in a way that is hard to see. A plain answer takes two seconds and ends. A vague answer takes two seconds and then continues, in your own head, for a week, because the vagueness has to be maintained and remembered and repeated.

And there is something else it does, which is worse. Being vague about a number tells the person on the other side of the fence that the number is shameful, which is information she did not have and would never have supplied herself.

You are able to say a number plainly and end the whole transaction, and a price spoken out loud has never once carried the weight that a price avoided carries. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a plain thing gets said, and Philippians 4:11 has a man stating his own condition plainly and moving straight on.

So say it. Once. To one person. And then do not explain it.

You have a two second sentence available that ends this entirely, and a number said once and left alone has never once needed to be maintained afterward. The Holy Spirit is the one present when a plain thing gets said and then dropped, and Philippians 4:11 has a man state his condition and move straight on.

The not explaining is the actual instruction. Because the explanation is where the shame lives: it was all we could manage just now, things have been difficult since, we did not want to spend more until. Every one of those sentences agrees that the number needs a defense.