I Keep Saying Sorry for It

Before I go one line further, the same thing I say at the top of every page on this site, and I would rather repeat it forever than assume it. This is not medicine. I am not a clinician, nothing here is treatment, and nothing on this page belongs anywhere near where a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist stands. If somebody has you worried, get them looked at, and do it soon. That is not panic. That is the right order of things.

Now. You went in there again today with something in your hands, and you apologized for it before you had even put it down.

Sorry, it is only soup. Sorry, I did not know what else to bring. Sorry, this is probably useless. I know it is not what you need.

I want to look at that apology, because I do not think it is modesty. I think it is grief wearing a polite coat. You are saying sorry for the gap between what you brought and what you wish you could carry in, and the gap is enormous, and you have decided to carry the whole of it out loud every time you walk through the door.

He defended a woman for bringing the wrong thing

There is a scene in Bethany that I think about constantly, because everybody in the room agreed she had got it wrong, and one voice disagreed.

She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying. (Mark 14:8, King James Version)

Look at what He actually says. Not this was exactly right. Not this was the most useful contribution available. He says she has done what she could, and He says it as a defense, in a room where everybody else was explaining what she should have done instead.

And the phrase is not a consolation prize. In the sentence right after it He attaches her act to the gospel wherever it goes in the whole world.

You are doing what you can, and He has never once used that phrase as a way of saying it was not enough. Mark 14:8 has Christ take an act the room had already dismissed and defend it out loud, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman stop apologizing at a door.

The people criticizing her were not villains, by the way. Their point was reasonable. There were better uses. There always are better uses. That is exactly why the defense had to come from somewhere other than the arithmetic.

You have been standing in a room doing arithmetic against yourself, and the arithmetic has never once been the measure. The Spirit of God is the one who answers a person's own objection before they make it, and what is written has an act defended rather than justified.

The apology is doing something to them, too

Let me say the harder half, gently, because nobody is going to say it to you otherwise.

When you apologize for what you brought, the person in the bed now has a job. They have to reassure you. They have to say no, it is lovely, honestly, thank you, and they have to put energy they do not have into managing your feelings about your own gift.

You did not mean to do that. But that is what happens, every single time, and after a while some people stop asking for anything at all, because asking generates an apology they then have to absorb.

You are allowed to hand a thing over without an explanation attached, and nobody in that bed has ever once needed the explanation. Mark 14:8 records what she did and not one word of what she said about it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets somebody put a bag down and simply sit.

There is a plainer way, and it takes some nerve at first. Walk in, put it down, say here, and then say nothing else about it.

You were not sent in there to explain yourself, and the passage has never once asked the giver for a statement. The Spirit of God is the one who takes the wobble out of a kindness, and it is written that she did what she could, said about her hands rather than about her words.

The plain routing, and this one is not a small thing

Here is the part of the page that is not comfort. It sits here on purpose, because a page about soup is exactly where somebody could quietly decide the soup was the plan.

If something frightening is happening right now, that is 911, and it is before you finish this page. If the heavy thing tonight is in your own mind, 988 answers and a real person picks up. And if the one you are visiting has been unwell and nobody qualified has looked, then the most useful thing in your hands is not in the bag: you ring a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist, or you help them ring.

You are carrying one thing that is genuinely the right thing, and it has never once needed an apology. Mark 14:8 has a woman do the thing that was actually hers to do while the room argued about better options, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves a person from the kitchen to the phone.

Nobody is going to think you made a fuss. And if they do, let them. A fuss is survivable.

You have permission to be the one who says it out loud in that house, and the text has never once praised the person who kept quiet. The Spirit of God is the one who steadies somebody making an awkward call, and what is written defends the woman who acted while others explained.