Five Years of Being Polite

Somebody makes the coffee and somebody says thank you and both of you mean it, and that is the entire trouble.

Five years since the bad year. You did the work. Not the version people describe at a distance, the actual work: the counselor on Wednesdays for fourteen months, the two conversations that nearly ended it, the apology that took three attempts before it was an apology and not a defense.

It held. That is not nothing and you both know it is not nothing.

And what you have now is a house where nobody raises their voice, where the calendar works, where the bins go out, where you are unfailingly courteous to each other, and where neither of you has said anything true in about four years.

You are not unhappy. That is the strange part, and it is why you have never been able to describe this to anybody. There is no crisis to point at. If you tried to explain it you would sound ungrateful, and you know exactly how the sentence would land: so what is the actual problem?

The problem is that you are two people who share a kitchen very considerately.

Last Tuesday she laughed at something on the radio, properly, the old laugh, and you were in the hall and you stopped, and it went through you like a draught from an open door.

Jesus puts abiding alone in the middle of the picture

There is a sentence of Jesus about a seed that people quote for the wrong half.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.John 12:24

The phrase to sit on is not the fruit. It is abideth alone.

That is what a grain does when nothing has happened to it. It stays intact, unchanged, entirely itself, and completely alone. It is not damaged. It is preserved, and preserved is exactly the problem.

Jesus is talking about His own death here, and about what following Him costs. But the picture underneath it is exact and it will hold your kitchen: two things can be safely preserved and not alive.

You preserved the marriage. That was the right work and it was hard and you both did it.

You are not looking at a failure, you are looking at ground that has not been opened. I am not putting my own idea over you here. Scripture says except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, John 12:24, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man in a hallway see that without hearing it as an accusation.

Politeness is what survival looks like afterwards

Here is what actually happened, and neither of you chose it.

After a bad year, two people learn to be careful. That is not coldness, it is competence. You both learned exactly which subjects go wrong and exactly which tone starts something, and you got extremely good at avoiding all of it.

That skill saved the marriage. It is also now the wall.

And the reason neither of you has taken it down is that the last time the walls came down it nearly ended everything, and no one in this house wants to be the one who reopens the ground.

That is not cowardice. It is memory, and it is doing its job.

You have not gone cold, you have gone careful. Scripture says perfect love casteth out fear, 1 John 4:18, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the fear out rather than requiring you to be braver than you currently are.

And I am not promising you warmth

I want to be honest, because a page that promises a feeling is worthless to two people in your position.

I do not know whether the old laugh comes back into your kitchen. I am not going to say it does, and I am not going to give you a technique, and I am certainly not going to tell you that a specific number of honest conversations produces a specific result in a marriage.

What I will say is what is actually settled. You are not the only one working in this house. Scripture says it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure, Philippians 2:13, and the Holy Spirit has been at work in that kitchen for five years while the surface stayed exactly the same.

Five years of nothing visible is not five years of nothing.

One true sentence

Here is the only practical thing on this page, and it is small on purpose.

Not a conversation. Not a summit. One true sentence, said in the kitchen, about something that does not matter very much.

I miss talking to you. Or even smaller: that was the old laugh, on Tuesday.

It is small because small is what a careful house can survive, and because five years of politeness will not be dismantled by an announcement. It gets dismantled by one sentence that is not procedural, and then a week later another one.

You have permission to say something true without it becoming an event. Scripture says let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, Colossians 4:6, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets one honest sentence out of a person who has been managing a tone for four years.