I Lost It In Front Of Other People

There were people there. That is the whole difference and you know it.

You have lost your temper at home a hundred times and none of those have stayed with you like this. The words were not worse. The volume was not higher.

What was different is that four adults saw it, and one of them looked away, and you have been replaying that particular head turning for two days.

And underneath the replaying is a thought you would not say out loud, which is that those people now know something about you that they did not know before, and there is no way to go back and unshow it.

Meanwhile your own child, who is the person this actually happened to, is completely fine and asked you about something unrelated over breakfast.

I am not going to tell you what those people are thinking. I do not know and neither do you. And I am not going to tell you nobody noticed, because somebody did, and you watched them do it.

For mine own sake

There is a sentence in Isaiah that says the thing you need and then says why, and the why is the part that will not fit in a person's head.

I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins. (Isaiah 43:25, King James Version)

Blotteth out. That is a word about a written record, and about ink being removed from a page rather than a note being added underneath it.

You have ink coming off a page and not a correction written under it, and the difference between those two is the whole verse. It is written in Isaiah 43:25 that He blotteth out the transgressions, and the Spirit of God is the one who removes a record instead of annotating it.

And then: for mine own sake. Not for yours. Not because you asked well. God gives the reason for the erasing as something to do with Himself, which means the whole transaction is held up by something that cannot wobble.

You have a record that is being blotted out for God's own sake, and none of it rests on how well you handled the last two days. Isaiah 43:25 says I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a house where somebody has been replaying a room since Saturday.

And will not remember thy sins. Not cannot. Will not, which is a decision rather than a limitation.

There is a difference between a thing being forgotten and a thing being deliberately not brought up, and the second one is stronger, because it is chosen and it holds.

You are not being remembered for that afternoon, and the not remembering was a decision rather than an oversight. It is written in Isaiah 43:25 that He will not remember thy sins, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that a settled thing rather than a hope.

The room you are replaying is the wrong room

Now let me name what is actually happening, because there are two events and the work has gone into the wrong one.

Event one: something happened between a parent and a child. That one has a repair, it is available tonight, and it takes about eleven words.

Event two: some adults formed an impression. That one has no repair, because it is happening inside other people, and there is nothing anybody can do in there.

You are released from the second one, and it has never once been on the list of things God asked anybody to carry. Isaiah 43:25 puts the erasing in God's own hands and mentions no witnesses at all, and the Holy Spirit is the one who unhooks a person from a job that does not exist.

Two days have gone into event two, which cannot be worked on, and almost none into event one, which can.

Isaiah 43:25 deals with the record in front of God and says nothing at all about the impressions of witnesses, and the Holy Spirit is the one who puts a person's attention back where something can actually be done.

You are able to work on the part that has a repair, and the rest of it has never once been yours to manage. Isaiah 43:25 blots out the transgression without consulting anybody who was watching, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an impossible task out of somebody's hands.

And there is a plain thing to say, because two days of replaying has turned into something else.

That afternoon is not a verdict on you. It is not a score, it is not a grade, and it is not a secret about your family that four people now hold.

It was a hard ten minutes with an audience, and the audience is not the judge.

You have not been found out, and one bad moment in front of witnesses has never been the true account of a household. The written word blots the record for God's own sake in Isaiah 43:25, and the Spirit of God is the one who declines to reissue a thing He has already erased.

The apology goes to one person only

Here is a distinction that matters enormously and it is easy to get backwards.

The apology belongs to the child. Not to the room. Not to the four adults, not to the one who looked away, and not to the host.

You are relieved of an apology you were never asked for, and the room has never once been on the list of people owed one. Isaiah 43:25 settles the record with God rather than with witnesses, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a repair pointed at the person who took the hit.

Apologizing to the adults would feel like relief, and it would be relief, and it would be relief for the wrong person. It would also quietly make a child into the occasion of an awkward conversation between grown ups, which is a second thing done to them on top of the first.

So the apology goes to one person, and it is the person it happened to.

Isaiah 43:25 handles what is owed to God, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps the human repair pointed at the person who actually took the hit.

You have one apology to make and one person to make it to, and the room has never once been owed anything. Isaiah 43:25 settles the record with God directly, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in eleven words said to a child in a car on the way home.