The Toast At My Uncle's Table

Tomás can get through a whole week now. Monday to Friday, no trouble, no drama, nothing anybody would notice.

It is Sunday at his uncle's house that has him.

Not because the house is hard. The house is the best place he knows. Twenty people down a table under the vine, four conversations at once, his aunt shouting at somebody to sit down and eat, his cousin's children under the tablecloth doing something they will be in trouble for in about ninety seconds.

It is the toast.

There will be one. There is always one. Somebody will be helped to their feet at about half past three, and there will be that noise a family makes when it knows what is coming, and somebody will pour, and a small glass will arrive in front of every adult at that table including him.

He has run the options for eleven months.

He can turn it over. Turning your glass over at that table is not a preference, it is a statement, and it will be seen by nineteen people simultaneously, and his aunt will ask, and she will ask lovingly, in front of everyone.

He can take it and not drink it, which he did in March, and his uncle noticed within four minutes and looked at him with an expression Tomás is still carrying around.

He can not go. He has not gone twice. The second time his mother called him on the Monday and did not mention it, which was worse than if she had.

So mostly he takes it. He takes the small glass and he drinks it with everybody, and it is one glass, and one glass is nothing, and it is Sunday evening before he is honest about what one glass does to a Sunday evening.

And here is where I stop talking about Tomás, because you have a table too, and yours has a moment in it, and you have been running the options all week.

Let me be exact about what has hold of you, because if we aim at the wrong thing we miss. It is not the drink. You proved that Monday to Friday. It is nineteen faces turning at once.

The snare is the faces, not the glass

Let me name it precisely first, because a thing correctly named is already loosened.

You are not held here by a substance. You are held by the fear of being seen refusing, and God has a name for that and it is not weakness and it is not vanity. He calls it a snare, which is to say a trap set on a path, laid quietly, and He says so as a matter of fact: And it is the Holy Spirit who makes that land in you rather than merely read well.

The fear of man brings a snare: but whoever puts his trust in the Lord shall be safe.Proverbs 29:25

That verse is doing you an enormous kindness. It refuses to call your Sunday a moral failure. It calls it a trap, which is the correct word for a thing that is set up in advance, out of sight, on ground you have to walk over anyway.

And it does not tell you to be braver. Look again at the second half. The way out of the snare is not nerve, it is trust, moved from the faces to the Lord. So your safety at that table is not something you have to manufacture in front of nineteen people, and Scripture is where I get that rather than my own advice, and God's Spirit is the one making it operative at half past three on a Sunday.

What you owe that table

Now let me say a hard and freeing thing about the family, because you love them and that is not the problem, it is the leverage.

You owe that table your presence. You owe it your love and your attention and your hands carrying things and your patience with the story you have heard forty times. You owe it your honor, especially your uncle's.

You do not owe it your body.

That is not disrespect and it is not you thinking you are better than anybody. Honoring your uncle and drinking your uncle's toast are two different acts, and the family has confused them, and you have been letting the confusion stand because untangling it in front of everyone is expensive.

So hear this: your hands are your own and they were given to you, and no table has ever had a lawful claim on them. That is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it something you can stand on at half past three rather than something you agree with on a Tuesday.

And here is the plain, serious half, and take it exactly as carefully as I am saying it. If you have been drinking daily, please do not simply stop by yourself. Coming off alcohol without medical supervision can be genuinely dangerous, and that is not a reason to keep going, it is the reason to see a doctor this week and say plainly how much and how often, so that whatever comes next comes safely. And keep every other real help you have: the meeting, the counselor, the medicine, the cousin who calls you. None of it competes with what God is doing in you and none of it is a smaller faith. It is His kindness arriving with a face and a phone number.