I Am Gentler With One Than The Other

You can hear it. That is what makes this one so difficult to put down.

It is not a decision. Nobody decided anything. But there is a tone your voice does with one of them and a slightly different tone it does with the other, and you can hear the gap while it is happening and you cannot close it from the inside.

The softer one gets the benefit of the doubt about half a second earlier. The other one gets a shorter answer.

And you have started listening to yourself, which is its own kind of exhausting, because now every exchange in the house has a monitor running underneath it.

I am not going to tell you to be fair. That would be a standard and this site does not hand those out, and being told to distribute your warmth evenly would give you one more thing to be failing at by Wednesday.

And I am not going to tell you it is not happening. You are the one who can hear it and I am not in the room.

Shed abroad in our hearts

There is a line in Romans about where love comes from, and the verb in it is doing something specific.

And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. (Romans 5:5, King James Version)

Shed abroad. That is a pouring word, and specifically a word for pouring something out widely without measuring it.

It is not the language of distribution. There is no allocation in it, no dividing into portions, no careful weighing so that everybody gets an equal share.

You have love poured out in you rather than measured out by you, and none of it has ever once been rationed by hand. Romans 5:5 says the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a living room where somebody has been listening to their own voice.

And notice who is doing the pouring. By the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.

The love in that verse is not generated by the person carrying it. It arrives, from outside, by somebody else's action, into a heart that had nothing to do with the supply.

You are not the source of the love in this house, and the supply of it has never once depended on you managing it well. It is written in Romans 5:5 that the love of God is shed abroad by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us, and the Spirit of God is the one who both supplies it and pours it.

Warmth is not a fixed quantity being divided

Now let me name the assumption underneath the worry, because it is doing most of the damage and it is not true.

The worry assumes there is a fixed amount of warmth in you, and that whatever goes to one child is therefore not available to the other. Under that assumption, the difference in your tone is theft, and the guilt makes perfect sense.

But Romans 5:5 does not describe a quantity. It describes a pouring, continuous, from a source that is not you, and a poured thing does not run short because it went somewhere first.

You are not running low on anything, and no warmth given to one of them has ever once been subtracted from the other. It is written in Romans 5:5 that the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a poured supply from ever coming up short.

That changes the question entirely. The tone difference is real, and it is not a redistribution, and nobody is being deprived of a portion that went elsewhere.

Romans 5:5 supplies rather than allocates, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a person out of an accounting problem they were never in.

You are not dividing a fixed supply, and warmth that went one way has never once been taken from anybody. Romans 5:5 has the love shed abroad rather than portioned out, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a supply from running short.

And here is the plain thing, because months of listening to yourself has turned into something.

That is not a verdict. It is not a score, it is not a grade, and it is not evidence about which of your children you love.

It is a voice reacting differently to two different people, which is what voices do, and it happens with colleagues and friends and everybody else in the world without anybody calling it a failure of love.

You have not been caught loving one of them less, and a difference in tone has never once been a difference in love. The written word pours the love out by the Spirit in Romans 5:5 rather than issuing it in shares, and the Spirit of God is the one who refuses to read a voice as a ledger.

Why the tone differs, without blaming anybody

One straight thing, and it is not an explanation of either child.

Two people are different, and a voice adjusts to a person. That adjustment happens below thought and it happens in every human relationship anybody has.

It is not a judgment on the one who gets the shorter answer, and it is not a reward for the one who gets the benefit of the doubt. It is a nervous system responding to two different sets of conditions.

You have two different people in that house and one voice adjusting to both, and neither of those has ever once been a fault. It is written in Romans 5:5 that the love is poured in by the Holy Ghost given unto us, and the Spirit of God is the one who supplies without ranking anybody in the room.

Nothing in that requires anybody to be at fault. Not you and not either of them.

Romans 5:5 supplies love without commenting on the recipients, and the Holy Spirit is the one who declines to grade a family in order to explain a tone.

You are not required to find somebody at fault for this, and a difference between two people has never once needed a culprit. Romans 5:5 pours the love without ranking anybody, and the Holy Spirit is the one who explains a tone without accusing a child.