They Get Ahead And Wait For Me

There is a particular thing they do at corners.

They arrive first, and then they stop, and they turn round, and they look pleasant about it. Nobody sighs. Nobody says anything. And every time it happens you feel it land somewhere in your chest.

It happens perhaps six times on a walk of any length. Six small confirmations that this outing has a slowest person in it and everybody knows who it is.

And you have begun, quietly, to say no. Not often enough for anybody to notice. Just enough that you go about half as much as you did two years ago, and the reason has never once been said out loud to anybody.

I would like to say something about that corner, because I think the thing you are reading there is not what is happening.

I will lead on softly

There is a moment in Genesis where a man is offered an escort and turns it down for a reason worth reading twice.

And he said unto him, My lord knoweth that the children are tender, and the flocks and herds with young are with me: and if men should overdrive them one day, all the flock will die. I will lead on softly, according as the cattle that goeth before me and the children be able to endure. (Genesis 33:13-14, King James Version)

I will lead on softly, according as the children be able to endure.

Read who is setting the pace there. Not the strongest. Not the leader. The pace is set by whatever in the company can endure the least, and Jacob states that as the plan rather than as a concession.

You are not holding a household back, and it was never the fastest person who was supposed to set a family's pace. Genesis 33:14 makes the pace of the whole company a function of its most limited member, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as design rather than as allowance.

And notice what the alternative is called. Overdrive. If men should overdrive them one day, all the flock will die. Going at the fast pace is not described as efficient and everybody else keeping up. It is described as the thing that kills the company.

You have been standing between your family and being overdriven, and it was never a weakness that put you in that position. The written word names the fast pace as the danger and the slow one as the safeguard, and the Spirit of God is what turns a woman at the back into the one holding the whole thing together.

What is actually happening at the corner

Now let me offer a different reading of those six stops, because I do not think it has been considered.

They are waiting. That is the fact. The word added to the fact is patience, and patience implies a cost, and a cost implies somebody is one.

But look at what they are actually doing. They are not going home. They are not going on without you. Six times in one walk, a household chooses to stop and stand in the road until you arrive, and then carry on together.

That is not tolerance. That is a family repeatedly declining to leave, and they are doing it about once every four minutes. The pace of a household is set by whoever needs it most, and being that person is not the same as holding everybody back.

You are being waited for rather than tolerated, and it was never obligation that kept anybody standing at a corner. Genesis 33 puts the slow pace at the center of the plan rather than at the edge of it, which is exactly why the Spirit of God will not let a woman read six choices as six complaints.

And here is the cost of the reading you have been using. Because you hear patience, you have started saying no, and the household has begun losing the walks entirely. Nobody has gained a faster afternoon. They have lost the whole afternoon, and none of them know why.

Go, and do not apologize once

Here is the practical part, and it is one prohibition.

Go out with them, and do not apologize for the pace. Not once, in any form.

You are able to walk at your own pace without saying sorry for it, and it has never once been rudeness to move at the speed you have. The passage has a man announce the slow pace as the plan without a word of apology in it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman walking at the back of her own family.

That means: no sorry at the corner. No you go on. No do not wait for me. No small joke about being slow, which is the version that hurts most because it makes everybody agree with it out loud.

If you want to say anything at a corner, say thank you. That is accurate, and it costs nothing, and it names what they are actually doing.

You are able to name what they are doing rather than what you fear, and it has never once been vanity to receive something as a kindness. Genesis 33:14 announces the soft pace as leadership, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present at a corner where a family has stopped and turned around.

And go, twenty minutes, this week. The going is the thing that has been slipping, and it will keep slipping quietly until somebody decides otherwise.