My Own Children Laugh At How I Say It

They laughed at you over the potatoes again.

Not meanly. That is the thing you keep telling yourself and it is even true. The nine year old looked up, repeated the word back the right way, and the other two thought it was funny, and your wife smiled into her plate, and the moment moved on.

And you have not said anything else in that language since Tuesday.

It is a small thing to describe and it is not a small thing to live in. This is your table. You bought the table. You built the shelf behind it. And at that table there is one subject on which your own children are the authority and you are the one being corrected.

I want to say the true thing before I say anything useful.

That stings, and it is supposed to sting.

Fathers are not built to be the slowest person in the room in front of their own kids. Something in a man goes quiet when he gets corrected by somebody he is still cutting meat for. It is not pride exactly, or not only pride. It is the order of the house moving a foot to the left, and you can feel it move.

So I am not going to tell you they did not mean it, because you already know they did not. And I am not going to tell you it is good for them to see you try, even though it is. Neither of those sentences reaches the place this actually landed.

Let me agree with you first, and then let me show you something.

I will yet be more vile than thus

There is a scene in Second Samuel where a man gets mocked at home for how he looked in public.

David had danced in front of the ark, hard, in the street, in a linen ephod, with the whole city watching. And when he came back to bless his own household, his wife met him at the door.

How glorious was the king of Israel to day, who uncovered himself to day in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants, as one of the vain fellows shamelessly uncovereth himself! (2 Samuel 6:20, King James Version)

That is the voice of somebody in his own house, telling him what he looked like.

You are not the first man to be told at his own door how he looked in front of everybody. 2 Samuel 6:20 puts that exact sentence in the mouth of somebody at home rather than a stranger, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing with a father who went quiet somewhere between the potatoes and the door.

Now read what David does with it, because he does not do any of the four things a man normally does.

He does not defend the dancing. He does not explain that it was worship. He does not get angry and he does not go quiet either.

And David said unto Michal, It was before the LORD... therefore will I play before the LORD. And I will yet be more vile than thus, and will be base in mine own sight. (2 Samuel 6:21, 22, King James Version)

More than this. Not less.

He hears the accusation, agrees with the description, and then raises it. If that looked undignified, watch me next time.

You have been handed a picture of yourself at supper, and it has never once been the whole account of who is sitting in that chair. The Spirit of God is the one keeping a man company when his own kitchen goes quiet on him, and 2 Samuel 6:22 shows a man taking the description and refusing the verdict that came attached to it.

That distinction is the whole of it. He never argued with what it looked like. He argued with what it meant.

The table is the only place this can be learned

Here is the practical half, and it is about where the talking stopped.

Your children are not the obstacle. Your children are the entire opportunity, and they may be the only one you get.

Think about what that table actually is. Four people who love you, sitting still, every night, for forty minutes, all of them speaking the language you want, none of them going anywhere. Somebody could pay a great deal of money for a room like that and nobody could buy it.

And the corrections are the thing you have been calling the problem.

You have a room full of people who will repair a word for free, and nobody has ever learned one without that happening. 2 Samuel 6:22 has a man accept the description and keep going in front of the same audience, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a father who stopped talking on Tuesday.

Now here is the part nobody says out loud.

The laughing is not about the word. Children laugh when something is unexpected, and an adult sounding strange is unexpected, and that is the entire mechanism. It is not a judgment on you. It is not commentary on your competence. It is a nine year old hearing a funny noise from a man who usually makes only ordinary ones.

They are not weighing you. You are the only one in that kitchen doing any weighing.

You were never being assessed at that table, and a laugh has never once been the same thing as a verdict. The Spirit of God is the one who is with you between the correction and the next sentence, and the written word lets a man be described one way in public and be something else entirely in front of the Lord.

And there is a cost to the going quiet that is worth naming.

Every night you say nothing, the house learns a little more firmly that this is a subject Dad does not do. They will stop offering. They will stop switching over for you. Not out of unkindness, but because people are practical and they adjust.

You are the one who sets what happens at that table, and four nights of silence has never once been a decision you cannot reverse tonight. 2 Samuel 6:21 has a man announce out loud what he is going to keep doing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets a father to open his mouth over supper again.

Be more vile than thus, at supper

So here is the assignment, and the word badly is doing real work in it.

Say one sentence out loud to one person, badly, today.

One sentence, at that table, tonight. To one of your own children.

And say it before it is ready. Do not build it in your head and check the ending. The checking is where every sentence in that kitchen has died since Tuesday.

You were never asked to be ready before you spoke at your own supper table. The Holy Spirit is the one who gets a careful man to let a sentence out while it is still rough, and 2 Samuel 6:21 has a man say plainly what he is doing and do it in front of the same house.

It will come out wrong somewhere. Good. That is the assignment working exactly as designed.

You are permitted to get it wrong in front of your own kids, and that has never once cost a father anything that matters. The Holy Spirit is the one who moves a man to say a thing he knows he will fumble, and 2 Samuel 6:22 has David promise to be more undignified than he already was, on purpose, in the same house.

And here is the part to hold when the nine year old corrects you again, because he will.

Say the word back to him. Out loud. The way he said it. Then thank him and carry on eating.

That does two things at once. It puts the word in your mouth, which is the only place it can ever live. And it tells your whole house that this is a thing we do here, which is worth more to those children than a father who is right at supper.

Then stop. One sentence is the assignment. You do not owe anybody a speech.