It Died While I Was Away

You were gone ten days and he said he would water it.

And he did, probably. Or he did for the first four days and then something happened, or he did it in a way that was not quite what it needed, or he genuinely did nothing at all and has not mentioned it.

You will never know which and that is part of the problem.

What you do know is that you came back and it was finished, and he said something light about it when he handed the key over, and you said do not worry about it.

And you have not stopped thinking about it since.

You are allowed to be annoyed with somebody you like, and being annoyed has never once been the same as holding it against them.

Let me set out the exact bind, because I think it is worth seeing clearly rather than carrying vaguely.

You are annoyed. That is real and it will not go away by being denied.

And you are ashamed of being annoyed, because it is a plant, and he did you a favor, and he had a key and a life of his own and no obligation to be good at this.

So there are two things and the second one is standing on top of the first and neither is getting anywhere.

Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another

There is a line in Colossians that puts two things side by side, and the pairing is the useful part.

Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. (Colossians 3:13, King James Version)

Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another.

Now, those are two different activities and the verse names both, which tells you they are not the same thing.

Forgiving is what happens with a wrong. Forbearing is what happens with a person: it is bearing with somebody, putting up with a thing, carrying an ordinary friction that is not going to be resolved by a conversation.

You are being offered two tools rather than one, and Scripture has never once made forgiveness the only available response to an ordinary annoyance. Colossians 3:13 names forbearing separately, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a distinction in an old verse land on a man who has been at this for weeks.

And here is why the distinction matters to you specifically.

You have been reaching for forgiveness and it has not engaged. That is because forgiveness needs a wrong, and you do not actually believe he wronged you. He did a favor imperfectly. That is not an offense, and treating it as one requires an inflation you cannot honestly perform.

You are dealing with a friction rather than an offense, and an imperfect favor has never once been the same category as a wrong done. The Holy Spirit is the one who tells a man which of the two he is holding, and the written word carefully names them separately in one line.

And notice the phrase attached to the second one. If any man have a quarrel against any.

That conditional is doing something. Forgiving is for where there is a quarrel. Forbearing has no such condition attached to it. It is simply the ordinary work of being among people, and it applies whether or not anybody did anything.

You are permitted the one that requires no offense to have occurred, and forbearing has never once needed somebody to have been in the wrong first. The Spirit of God is the one who supplies what is needed for either, and the word attaches the condition only to the forgiving.

Do not say it to him

Let me be practical about the conversation, because it has been getting circled for weeks.

Do not raise it with him.

Now, that is unusual advice on this site, because most of these articles ask somebody to say a plain thing. And I want to be clear about why this one goes the other way.

There is no outcome available from that conversation that is worth having.

If you say it lightly, he will apologize and feel bad, and you will spend the rest of the conversation reassuring him, and afterward you will feel worse and so will he. If you say it seriously, you have made a plant into an incident between two grown men. And if he explains, you will hear an explanation about ten days that will not satisfy you and cannot.

You are not required to say every true thing to the person it is about, and a friction named out loud has never once been improved by the naming in every case. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives discretion as well as honesty, and Colossians 3:13 names forbearing without ever requiring it to be announced.

And here is the thing that makes not saying it possible, because simply resolving to swallow it does not work and you have already tried that for weeks.

It has to be said somewhere. Not to him. Out loud, on your own, where it can be heard once and stop being pressurized.

You are able to say a thing without delivering it, and a sentence spoken alone has never once been a lesser way of getting something out. The Spirit of God is the one who receives what is not going to be said to anybody else, and the written word gives forbearing as a real action rather than as a suppression.

Say it out loud, on your own

So here is the assignment, and it has two halves and the order matters.

Say nothing about it to him, and say the thing out loud on your own first.

The saying comes first. Out in the yard, in the car, wherever. The actual sentence, the annoyed one, in the words you have been thinking it in.

You are able to get a true sentence out of your own head, and something said once in an empty place has never once needed a recipient to have counted. Colossians 3:13 puts forbearing alongside forgiving as an actual work, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing there while a man says the thing he is not going to say.

Say it once. Do not repeat it and do not build on it, because a thing repeated out loud is being rehearsed rather than released.

And then, having said it, do not say it to him. Ever. Not this month and not in six months when the subject comes up naturally, because it does come up naturally and there will be a very easy opening.

You are able to let a thing be finished without the other person ever knowing there was anything, and a friction carried quietly has never once been the same as a friction denied. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes the difference between bearing something and burying it, and the word calls the bearing forbearing and lists it as a work rather than as a silence.

And ask him to do it again next time you go away. That is the last part and it is the one that actually settles it, because a man you have quietly written off as unreliable is a man you have quietly demoted, and asking him again undoes that in one move.