It happens about four times a night and it is always affectionate.
Somebody starts a story and stops and says ooh, careful, she's here. Somebody else says don't corrupt her. There is a running thing about her being the one who will be praying for the rest of them, and everybody laughs, and she laughs, because it is funny and because they love her and because in six years nobody has ever once been unkind.
That is what makes it so difficult to explain.
She has tried, twice, and both times it came out sounding ungrateful. How do you say please stop being warm about me in that particular way to people who have looked after you through two bereavements and a house move?
But she came home last night and sat in the car outside her own house for a few minutes, and what she was feeling was not hurt. It was smaller and stranger than hurt. It was that she has become a shape. There is a version of her in that group, and the version is quite nice and about two inches deep, and she is not sure she has been fully in that room for about a year.
That is your friendship. That is your car. And I want to say something to you, because there is a verse about what God looks at, and it was said to a prophet who had just misread a room.
What He looks at
Samuel is sent to a house to find a king, and he sees the eldest brother and immediately decides, and God stops him.
But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.1 Samuel 16:7
Man looketh on the outward appearance.
The context matters. This was not a cruel misjudgement. Samuel was being complimentary. He looked at a tall, impressive, entirely decent man and thought well of him, and God's response was not that the assessment was mean but that it was operating at the wrong level entirely.
Fond and shallow are perfectly able to travel together. That is what a nickname is.
You are being seen at the level nobody else can reach. Not the version, not the shape, not the two inches. The written word puts God's seeing at the heart rather than the surface, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes that live in a woman sitting in a car outside her own house.
Now let me say something about your friends, because a year of this could start to make them into people who diminished you, and they are not.
They looked after you through two bereavements. They gave you something to be in the group and they made it a warm thing rather than a cold one, which is more than most groups manage. They have never once been unkind, by your own account, and they would be genuinely upset to know about the car.
You have nobody to resent in that kitchen. The written word never asks you to be seen properly by everybody in order to be seen properly at all. The Holy Spirit loves all five of them, and He is not asking you to hold anything against them.
And now the thing that is really sitting on you, which is not the joke.
It is that you have started to play the part. That when somebody says careful, she's here, you deliver the little face, on cue, because it keeps the evening moving, and afterwards you feel like somebody who agreed to be smaller.
You are not required to be the whole of yourself to be known. The Lord looketh on the heart, and the looking is happening in that kitchen while the nickname is in the air. The Holy Spirit sees the woman underneath the little face, and He has never once mistaken her for the shape.
The breakthrough is not being seen properly by that group.
It is knowing that the two inches have never been the reading anybody important was working from.
You have spent a year suspecting that the version in that kitchen is what you actually amount to, because it is the only reflection you get looked at in four times a night. The verse takes the whole question off the table: the assessment that governs your life is being made somewhere else, at a depth no nickname reaches.
You are known at the heart, tonight, in that kitchen. The written word separates God's seeing from human seeing so completely that even a prophet got it wrong. The Holy Spirit has been reading the actual woman all year, including the parts of her nobody in that room has met.
What God does with those friendships, and whether anybody there ever sees more of you, is His, and this page will not predict it or set you a conversation to have.
You have a God who looks on the heart and not the label. The Lord seeth not as man seeth, and the difference is not politeness, it is depth. The Holy Spirit has seen the whole of you through every one of those evenings, and He has never mistaken the shape for the person.
Declare this over yourself
You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the standing to speak over your own name was given to you and no friendship group issues it or takes it back. Speak to the label and to the smallness, never over your friends; they belong to God, who loves them. What God does in that kitchen is His to decide, and however He answers it you are His today.
- Name they have for me in that group, you are fond and you are not who I am. The Word of God says the Lord looketh on the heart, so the reading that governs my life is being taken somewhere a nickname cannot reach.
- Feeling that I have agreed to be smaller, get off me in the name of Jesus. Fond and shallow travel together easily, and a warm two inches is still two inches, and I am not that.
- God, You see me at the heart and You have all year. Your written Word separates Your seeing from anybody else's, and the Holy Spirit has known the whole of me through every one of those evenings. I am known here, and I was known in that kitchen.
1 Samuel 16:7
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