They Laughed When I Said It

You said it at the table and there was about a second of silence and then everybody laughed.

And it was affectionate laughter. Nobody was unkind. Your son did an impression of you saying it, which was funny, and you laughed too, and the moment moved on within about eight seconds.

And then you did the thing afterward, which is the actual subject of this.

You said: I know, I know, it is only a washing machine.

And that sentence is the one worth looking at, because it was said by you, about you, to make the room comfortable, and it did make the room comfortable, and it also filed your own feeling under ridiculous in front of five people.

Nobody asked you to do that. It was done quickly and automatically and it is a thing you have been doing for years about all sorts of things, and it worked perfectly.

You are a woman who minds about something and not a woman who is being soft, and a family laughing at a feeling has never once been a family ruling on whether the feeling was allowed.

Weep with them that weep

There is a short instruction in Romans about what to do with other people's feelings, and it is entirely about matching.

Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep. (Romans 12:15, King James Version)

Weep with them that weep.

There is no assessment step in that sentence. It does not say: establish whether the weeping is proportionate, and then weep with them if it is. It says weep with them that weep, and the instruction is to match.

Which means the proportionality of a feeling is not a thing anybody in the room is supposed to be judging in the first place.

You are inside a passage that never once asks anybody to grade a feeling before responding to it, and a person who minds about something has never once had to justify the size of it first. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman replaying a table, and Romans 12:15 instructs matching rather than assessing.

And notice that the instruction goes both ways in that verse.

Rejoice with them that do rejoice. That half is easy and everybody does it. When somebody is delighted about something small, a room joins in without checking whether the delight is warranted.

Nobody says: I am not sure that is worth being that pleased about. The checking only appears on the other side, and the verse puts both halves in one sentence precisely so that they get treated the same way.

You are being offered the same treatment in both directions, and a small sadness has never once been more subject to review than a small delight. The written word pairs the rejoicing and the weeping in one line, and the Spirit of God is the one who applies the same rule to both.

And there is something in the word with that is doing all the work.

Not weep at them. Not weep for them, which is pity and is a different thing. With, which is alongside, in the same position, facing the same direction.

You are asking for company rather than for agreement, and somebody standing beside a feeling has never once been somebody endorsing a verdict about it. The Holy Spirit is the one who stands in that position when nobody else does, and Romans 12:15 asks for the with and not for an opinion.

The sentence afterward

Something practical, and it is about the second sentence rather than the laugh.

The laugh was fine. Families laugh. It was affectionate and quick and nobody meant anything by it, and if that had been all that happened, this would be nothing.

What happened next is the thing. You added a sentence that agreed with the laugh, and in agreeing with it you taught the room how to hold what you had just said.

That sentence is the one to stop saying, and it is more effective to stop saying it than to ask anybody to stop laughing.

You have been supplying the room with the verdict yourself, and a woman who says I know it is only a washing machine has never once needed anybody else to dismiss her. The written word asks for matching rather than for grading, and the Spirit of God is the one who shows a woman which sentence in that exchange was the costly one.

Now the practical instruction, and it is one person and one sentence and no retraction. Pick somebody. Not the table. One person, in a quiet moment, tonight or tomorrow.

Say the true version. Say: I am sad about that machine going and I do not entirely know why.

And then, and this is the whole discipline, do not add anything.

No I know it is silly. No I am being ridiculous. No small laugh in the gap. The gap will last about two seconds and it will feel like nine, and the not filling it is the entire exercise.

You are able to say a true thing and then leave the silence alone, and two seconds of a pause have never once been the thing that made a sentence foolish. The Holy Spirit is the one in the room while the pause runs, and Romans 12:15 asks for the weeping to be matched rather than defended.

And what usually happens in that pause is that the other person says something true back, because a sentence that has not been taken back gives them somewhere to stand.

You have a sentence that gives somebody else a place to stand, and a true thing left standing has never once been a thing that closed a conversation down. The Holy Spirit is the one present while two people say true things, and Romans 12:15 asks for the with rather than the opinion.