I Say I Will Get Someone

There is a sentence, and it works every time.

I will get someone in to look at that.

It is a good sentence. It sounds responsible. It sounds like a man managing his household properly, delegating sensibly, aware of his own time. And it ends the conversation instantly, which is the actual reason it exists.

Because the alternative sentence is: I do not know how to do that. And that one has never come out of your mouth in this house.

So the fixture stays. Nobody gets called, because calling somebody would mean explaining on the phone what is wrong, and that conversation has the same problem in it. And in about three weeks somebody asks again, and the sentence comes out again, and it works again.

Before we go one inch further, let me put something down. Not knowing how to do a household job is not a moral failure. It is not a secret about a man's character. It is a piece of information that was never handed over, and not knowing how is not a character flaw. I am not going to spend this article pretending otherwise.

He that covereth

There is a proverb about covering, and I want to use it carefully, because the thing being covered here is not what the proverb is about.

He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. (Proverbs 28:13, King James Version)

That verse is about sin. I am not going to soften it or pretend it says something gentler, and I am certainly not going to tell anybody that not knowing how a faucet comes apart is sin. It is not. It never has been.

But look at the machinery Solomon is describing, because it is exact, and it runs on anything put into it. Covering does not work. Not because covering is wicked, but because a covered thing cannot be dealt with, and an uncovered thing can.

You have been running a covering operation over something that was never even a fault, and hiding a gap in what you were taught has never once been required by God or by anybody else. Proverbs 28:13 describes the mechanism of covering rather than blessing it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man look at his own hiding without being crushed by the looking.

And notice what the verse promises on the other side. Mercy. Not exposure, not humiliation, not a list. Mercy is what waits where a man stops covering, and that is the whole shape of it.

You are standing in front of a door that has mercy behind it rather than a reckoning, and the far side of an uncovered thing has never once been the disaster the covering promised. The Spirit of God is the one who goes first into the sentence a man has been avoiding, and it is written in Proverbs that what follows the saying is mercy and not a sentence.

The sentence is costing you the help

Here is the practical damage, and tonight it matters more than the theology.

That sentence does not only hide the gap. It closes the door on the one thing that would fix it, which is somebody standing beside you.

Every person in your life who could show you how that fixture comes off has been told, gently and repeatedly, that it is handled. So they do not offer. They are not withholding. They genuinely believe it is in hand.

You have been declining help nobody ever knew was being declined, and a sentence designed to protect a man has never once been able to bring anybody closer. It is written in Proverbs 28:13 that covering is what stops a thing prospering, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can put a different sentence in a man's mouth on an ordinary Tuesday.

There is a second cost, quieter and longer. The children in that house are learning the sentence. They are learning that when a man does not know something, what he does is produce a confident phrase and move the conversation on. That gets handed over whole, without a word being said about it.

Now the limit, and I put it here rather than at the bottom. Sometimes I will get someone in is exactly the right sentence and the only right one. Never a gas appliance, never the breaker panel, never mains wiring, never a wall holding the building up, never a roof. Call a licensed professional and pay them what they ask. The difference is whether the sentence is a decision or a shield, and most men already know which one it has been.

You are entirely right to hand dangerous work to somebody qualified, and a real limit has never once been the same thing as a hiding place. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a man clarity about which of the two he is standing in, and Scripture puts mercy rather than shame on the far side of the plain sentence.

Say the true one once

So here is the ask, and it is one sentence long and it takes four seconds.

Say the true sentence out loud once tonight. I do not know how to do that.

To a person if possible. To your wife, to a friend, to whoever asked three weeks ago. And if that is too much this evening, then to an empty room, standing in front of the actual fixture, out loud, where your own ears can hear it.

You are able to say seven honest words out loud in your own house, and one plain sentence has never once cost a man the standing he was afraid of losing. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a dreaded sentence ordinary, and Proverbs 28:13 puts mercy and not exposure on the other side of the saying.

Here is what happens when it is said to a person, and it is worth having in advance so the imagined version stops running.

They say: oh, neither do I. Or they say: I can show you, it takes about ten minutes. Or they say nothing much at all, because to them a remark has just been made about a fixture, and to you the wall came down.

Not one of those is the version in your head. The version in your head has never once happened to anybody.

You have been rehearsing a reaction that nobody in your life is going to give you, and a fear practiced for eleven years has never once been able to survive four honest seconds. It is written in Proverbs that the covering is what fails and the speaking is what finds mercy, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the hallway with you.