I Am Still Trying To Impress Him

Greg is forty-six and there is a man who has not been his boss for nine years whose opinion still decides how a week goes.

They are friendly. That is what makes this impossible to explain. They have lunch twice a year, and it is a good lunch, and Malcolm asks after the children by name and means it.

And Greg spends about a fortnight before each of those lunches assembling things.

Not consciously. Not as a plan. He simply notices, in the weeks beforehand, that he is filing items: the piece of work that went well, the thing his eldest achieved, a comment somebody senior made about him at a conference. He arrives with a small internal folder and no intention of showing it to anybody, and then he shows it, casually, over about ninety minutes, in pieces.

And Malcolm says the same thing he always says, which is that's good, Greg, in a tone that is entirely warm and entirely flat, and then talks about something else.

And Greg drives home and is low for two days and cannot tell his wife why, because there is nothing to tell. A man he likes said something pleasant to him over lunch.

He has done this since he was twenty-nine.

Here is what he worked out about six months ago, sitting in a car park, and it did not help at all, because knowing a thing does not stop it:

It is not going to come. He is not withholding it. He does not have it. I have been waiting seventeen years at a door that this man does not know exists, and there is nobody behind it.

And here is where I stop talking about Greg, because you have your own Malcolm, and you have been assembling for your own lunch, and you already know the tone you are going to get.

Let me say the first thing plainly, because you have never once been able to say this out loud without it sounding pathetic, and it is not pathetic. Wanting to be delighted in by somebody you respect is one of the most ordinary human wants there is. There is nothing shameful in it. The trouble is not that you want it. It is where you have been going for it.

Somebody is singing over you

Let me put the strongest thing down first, because it is the exact thing you have been assembling folders for.

The delight you have been trying to earn already exists and it is not flat and it is not withheld. And the verse that says so is not restrained about it: And it is the Holy Spirit who makes that land in you rather than merely read well.

The Lord your God in the midst of you is mighty; He will save, He will rejoice over you with joy; He will rest in His love, He will joy over you with singing.Zephaniah 3:17

Read what God is described as doing, because it is startling and most people have never let it be startling.

Rejoice over you with joy. Not approve. Not tolerate. Rejoice.

He will rest in His love. The word behind it is to be quiet, settled, at ease. He is not restless about you and He is not waiting to see how the next quarter goes.

And then the one nobody knows what to do with: He will joy over you with singing. God, singing, over a person. That is not a tone that is warm and flat. That is not that's good, Greg.

So what you have been assembling a folder for has already been given, at a volume you have never once imagined, and Scripture is where I stand that rather than my own kindness, and God's Spirit is not reviewing your material. The Holy Spirit is the one carrying that into the room you are actually in.

He does not have it to give

Now let me say the merciful thing about Malcolm, because it will free you and it costs him nothing.

He is not withholding. You worked that out in a car park and you were right and it did not help, so let me put it where it can help.

Some people do not have that particular currency. It is not cruelty and it is not a strategy. There are men who genuinely cannot say the thing, who were not given it themselves, who think that's good is what the thing sounds like, and who would be astonished and probably distressed to learn that a competent man of forty-six has been low for two days after every lunch they have had for seventeen years.

You have been going to a well that is dry. Not poisoned. Dry.

And you have been reading the dryness as a verdict on the quality of your bucket, which is the whole of the trouble: seventeen years of assembling better material for a man who does not have the thing you are asking for.

Hear this: you are not owned by this and your worth is not pending a sentence from anybody. It has been settled, and it is not held quietly in reserve, it is sung. That is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it something you can carry into a lunch rather than something you find touching.

And the practical half, plainly, because a message without it has failed you. If this has a real grip, real help exists and none of it is small faith. A counselor is exactly right for something seventeen years old, and it is not an overreaction, and it very often turns out to be about somebody older than Malcolm. And say one true sentence to your wife in daylight, because she has watched you be low for two days twice a year for a long time and has never been told what it is.