When the Room Claps

It was the second Sunday in June and she had no idea it was coming, which she has thought about a great deal since, because if she had known she would have found a reason not to be there.

Twenty two years. The pastor said the number and then said some things that were true, and then the room stood up.

Not politely. Properly. Two hundred and some people, on their feet, for a long time, and a woman near the front who has known her the whole twenty two years was crying, and the young people at the back who barely know her were clapping because everybody was and because it is a good thing to do.

She looked at the side door. That is the memory she cannot get rid of. Not at the pastor, not at the room, not at her husband. She looked at the side door, twice, and calculated the route.

She did not leave. She stood there and eventually smiled and eventually sat down and afterwards said thank you to about forty people and meant every one of them.

But the side door is the thing.

She is sixty. She has spent twenty two years being the person who does the thing that needs doing and does not require a schedule to do it. Her theology is fine. She could give you a good clear account of grace and would not fumble it.

And a room stood up for her and her whole body went looking for an exit.

She has tried to name it and the closest she has come is this: while they were standing, she could feel every one of the twenty two years being handed back to her at once, and she did not want them. Not out of modesty. It was more like being given a very heavy box that you have spent two decades carefully not putting down anywhere, and being asked to hold it in front of everybody.

You will have your own side door. The exit you calculated while people were being glad about you.

What the psalm tells a soul to do

There is a psalm that opens with a man giving his own soul an instruction, which is a strange thing to do and is worth noticing.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.Psalm 103:2

Two commands, and the second one is doing more work than it looks.

Forget not all his benefits. He is telling himself to keep in view a list of good things that have come to him. Not to be modest about them. Not to be careful with them. To remember them, deliberately, as an act of will, because the natural drift of a soul is to let them slide.

Which is the exact opposite of what a woman does when she looks at a side door.

And notice what the two instructions do together. Bless the Lord, and remember the benefits. They are the same movement. He is not saying remember the good things and then, separately, praise God. He is saying the remembering is how the blessing gets done. The benefits are the material.

So take it plainly: you are asked to keep the good in view rather than to set it down, and that is what Psalm 103 says in its own words, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a man talking to his own soul and lays it down in a hall on the second Sunday in June.

Which reaches the heavy box directly. Her sense was that the twenty two years were being handed back to her and she did not want them, and the reason she did not want them is that she has understood them as a claim she would have to hold. The psalm gives them a different job. They are not a claim. They are material for something, and the something is directed at God, and the person doing the remembering is not the destination of any of it.

You have been handed material rather than a claim, because the written word makes the benefits the substance of the praise rather than a statement about the person, and His Spirit is what makes that reach a woman who has been rehearsing a route to a side door since June.

And there is a further thing in that verse that helps a person who does not want to be looked at. He says it to his own soul. In private. The psalm is a man in a room by himself doing something he never expects anybody to watch. You have somewhere to do this that has no audience in it, and Scripture is what provides it, and His Spirit is the one who makes a private movement as real as a public one.

What this site will not say to her

Now the guardrail, and it needs saying because there is a widespread and damaging version of this.

Nobody is telling her that she should have enjoyed it more, or that looking at the side door was a failure of faith or an excess of pride pretending to be humility. Two hundred people stood up without warning. Bodies do things.

And being honored is not dangerous. If this site ever teaches a woman to fear applause in order to stay safe, it has taught the opposite of the psalm, which is a man deliberately keeping good things in view rather than pushing them away.

Nor are the twenty two years an entry anywhere. There is no account. The crown in Scripture is placed on a head by somebody else, always, and the elders receive it before they cast it down, and skipping the first motion is not the higher road.

You are held by a regard that did not rise while a room was standing, 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 done well in that moment, and Scripture is what settles it, and His Spirit is what stops one Sunday in June from becoming something she keeps replaying.