What to Do With My Face

Eleven people. She has counted them since, in her head, several times, and it is definitely eleven.

They were flowers, which she had not expected, and a short speech, which she had absolutely not expected, and she had come in that morning thinking it was an ordinary Thursday and she had a thing at two.

Here is what she remembers. Not what was said. She could give you perhaps a third of what was said and no more, because from about the second sentence she was entirely occupied with a problem, and the problem was her face.

Smiling felt wrong. Too much like agreeing. Not smiling felt worse, like sulking or being ungrateful. She tried a middle thing which she is certain looked like she was in pain. At one point she laughed, at nothing, which had the effect of making the woman speaking pause slightly. She looked at the floor for a stretch and then worried that looking at the floor was rude and looked up too fast.

And then she said, well, thank you, this is lovely, in a voice that came out about a third higher than her actual voice.

The flowers were beautiful. They are on the table now, six days later, and they are on their last day and she has not thrown them out.

Here is what has bothered her since, and it is not the awkwardness itself, which she has mostly laughed off with her husband. It is that she was not present for it. Eleven people said kind and true things about eight years of work, and she does not know what they were, because she was busy managing her own face.

Something was given and she was somewhere else while it happened.

You will have your own third of a speech. The kindness that came and went while you were entirely occupied with how to look while it was happening.

The question that gives it a direction

There is a psalm that asks a question rather than making a statement, and the question is asked by somebody who has just had a great deal done for him.

What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me?Psalm 116:12

Read what he is doing. He has received something. He is not disputing it, minimizing it, or explaining it away. He takes it as given, entirely, and then he asks about direction: what do I do with this, where does it go.

That is a question about traffic, and it is the exact question she could not ask on Thursday, because she was fully occupied with a different one, which was: what should my face be doing.

And notice that the psalmist is not embarrassed. Nothing in the psalm is apologetic. He is not managing an awkward moment. He has been given a great deal, he says so plainly, and his whole concern is what to do next with it.

So take it plainly: you are being handed something with a direction attached rather than a demand, and that is what Psalm 116 says in its own words, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a question asked three thousand years ago and lays it down beside a jar of flowers on their last day.

Which reaches the real trouble, which was never the awkwardness. Her problem was that in the absence of anywhere to send it, the kindness had nowhere to go except back onto her, and a thing landing on you has to be managed, and managing it takes your whole attention, which is why she missed the speech.

Give it a direction and it stops needing to be managed. The psalm does not tell her to accept graciously. It gives her somewhere to be looking while it is happening, which is a completely different kind of help.

You have a direction to send it rather than a face to arrange, because the written word supplies the question of where it goes rather than the question of how to look, and His Spirit is what makes that reach a woman who has been replaying eleven people for six days.

And there is one more thing in that verse, which is the word render, an old word for paying back what is due. He asks it, and then the psalm goes on, and he never does find a payment, and what he does instead is take up a cup and call on the name of the Lord, which is not a payment at all. You have not been left with a debt at the end of the question, and Scripture is what shows that by never answering it in the currency it was asked in, and His Spirit is the one who makes an unpaid question restful rather than open.

What Thursday was not

Now the guardrail, briefly and firmly.

Thursday was not a test she failed. A woman who is handed flowers with no warning at nine in the morning is entitled to a face that does not know what to do. There is nothing in Scripture about performing gratitude well, and the eleven people were not marking her.

And being appreciated is not pride, and the flowers were not a danger, and this site will not teach anybody to be careful around kindness.

Nor is the eight years an entry anywhere. There is no account. A crown in Scripture is placed on a head by somebody else, always, and in the one glimpse we get of people holding one, they receive it and then throw it down, and neither motion involves any embarrassment.

You are held by a regard that did not rise on Thursday morning, because the written word puts our standing on Christ rather than on our record, and His Spirit is what makes that a floor rather than a phrase. You have nothing to have performed and nothing to have deserved, and Scripture is what settles both, and His Spirit is what stops six days of replaying from turning into a verdict on a face.