Her Neighbor Keeps Asking How She Does It

Three times, all of them over the fence, all of them with children within about six feet.

The first one was almost a joke. Something like: how are you always so calm, I would have lost it by now. And she laughed and said something about caffeine and it moved on.

The second was about four months later and less of a joke. It was on a bad afternoon for the neighbor, and it came out more like a question than a comment, and she laughed again and said something self deprecating and it moved on.

The third was two weeks ago and there was no joke in it at all.

The neighbor said, quite plainly, over a fence, holding a washing basket: how do you do it. And she meant it, and she waited about two seconds longer than a person waits when they are making conversation.

And she laughed. Same as the other two times.

Here is why, and it is not false modesty and it is not embarrassment about God.

It is that the house does not feel like that from inside.

She knows what the last fortnight has actually contained. She knows about Thursday, and about the twenty minutes on Tuesday when she was not calm at all and the door was shut, and she knows that she has prayed about four times in a month and two of them were in the car.

From over the fence there is a woman who seems steady. From in here there is somebody who is scraping through and who has one thing she holds onto and does not do very well.

And to answer that question honestly, she would have to say something true about a life she does not think looks like an advertisement, and she cannot work out how to do that without either lying upward or unloading downward.

So she laughs. Three times now.

And you have somebody who has asked. Over a fence or at a school gate or at a desk, and you have laughed it off every time, because they are asking about a version of you that you do not recognize from the inside.

She told a whole town without tidying anything up

There is a woman in John four who has the least presentable life of anybody who does any evangelism in the Gospels, and she does not fix it before she speaks.

She has just had a long conversation with a stranger at a well in which the specifics of her own life were laid out in front of her, which is not a comfortable experience for anybody.

And here is what she says to the town.

"Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?"John 4:29

She leads with the part she would have hidden.

She does not say: I have had a religious experience and I am now qualified to tell you about it. She says, in effect, this man knows the whole of my life, and then she puts a question on the end rather than a claim.

And the account says many in the town believed because of her word.

You are able to tell somebody something true without first becoming a person whose life looks like an advertisement. It is written that she said, come, see a man who told me all that I ever did (John 4:29), and it is the Holy Spirit who took a sentence like that, said by a woman with nothing tidied up, and moved a whole town with it.

Now the thing about the two directions, because that is the actual difficulty and it deserves a real answer.

You said you cannot answer honestly without either lying upward or unloading downward, and both of those are correct instincts. Lying upward would be pretending to a serenity you do not have. Unloading downward would be turning a neighbor's question into a place to put your own week.

There is a third thing and it is what the woman at the well did. You can say the true thing about who is holding you without describing the state of your house or claiming to be steady.

Something like: I am not calm, honestly, but I do have one thing I hold onto. Eleven words. Neither upward nor downward.

You have a middle option and it is the only one anybody has ever actually used. Scripture says always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15), and the word there is hope rather than performance, and it is the Holy Spirit who supplies both the hope and the words in the moment.

And the fortnight, because it needs saying plainly.

Thursday, and the twenty minutes on Tuesday behind a shut door, and four prayers in a month with two of them in a car.

You have listed those as evidence against yourself. Look at them as evidence of something else: a woman under real pressure who has prayed in a car and has kept going and has been visible enough across a fence that another woman has asked her three times.

You are being read accurately by somebody outside and inaccurately by yourself. It is written that the Lord looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), and it is the Holy Spirit who has been keeping a woman on her feet through a fortnight she is embarrassed about, which is exactly what her neighbor has been noticing without knowing what she is looking at.

And what she is actually asking.

Not for a technique. She is not asking how to be calm. She waited two seconds too long with a washing basket in her hands on a bad afternoon, and what she is asking is whether there is anything.

You are being asked whether there is anything, and you have an answer to that one. Scripture says taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8), which is an invitation and not a claim about the person issuing it, and it is His Spirit who does the tasting part in anybody.