His Mother Is Coming To Eat

She will look at the plate and then at you.

That is the whole picture and it is extremely detailed. You can see the pause. You can see the small adjustment in her face before she says something perfectly nice.

And she is coming on Sunday.

You have been thinking about it since Tuesday. Not constantly. But it is there, underneath everything else, in the way a dentist appointment sits in a week, and you have already changed the plan twice.

The first plan was the thing you always make. The second was something better. The third one, the current one, is something you have never made before, and you have four days.

And you know, at some level, that the third plan is the worst one and you are going to do it anyway.

So let me say the first thing plainly, before anything practical.

Nothing here is going to tell you she is not judging you.

She may well be. Some mothers do and some do not and you know which one you have, and being told to relax by somebody who has never met her would be useless. The picture in your head may be entirely accurate, and this article assumes it is.

Do I now persuade men, or God

There is a line in Galatians where somebody asks himself who he is working for, and the question is unusually blunt.

For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. (Galatians 1:10, King James Version)

Do I now persuade men, or God.

He is not asking whether people matter. The man writing that spent his entire life among people and in service to them. The question is narrower: who is the audience, and who is the work being done for.

And it is asked as a live question rather than settled once. He puts it to himself, which suggests it is the kind of thing that drifts and needs asking again.

You are being handed a question rather than a rebuke, and a woman aware of an audience has never once been a woman doing something wrong. Galatians 1:10 asks who the work is for rather than condemning anybody for noticing, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody who has changed a plan three times.

And notice the phrase if I yet pleased men.

Yet. Still. It is the word of somebody who knows this is a thing he used to do and might do again, and he is not describing a fault he has grown out of.

Nobody in that sentence is free of this. It is a thing to notice and re-decide, which is a great deal more livable than a thing to have conquered.

You have something to re-decide rather than something to have already beaten, and an old pull toward an audience has never once been a failure to have finished with it. The Spirit of God is the one with a woman four days out from a Sunday, and Galatians 1:10 uses the word yet about himself.

Three plans and the wrong one winning

Here is the practical half, and it is one observation about the drift.

Plan one was the thing you always make. That plan was for your husband's mother coming to eat at your house. Plan three is for the picture in your head, and those are two different events, and only one of them is actually happening on Sunday.

Watch what the drift did. It moved from a thing that gets done well, in your sleep, by your hands, to a thing that has never been done at all, under observation, in front of the one person it matters most with, on a deadline.

If she were designing a test for you she could not have done better. And she did not design it. You did, on Tuesday, by yourself.

You were building the test rather than being set one, and a plan that drifted toward difficulty has never once been the plan with the better odds. Galatians 1:10 asks who the audience is rather than assuming there is not one, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman who has four days and a dish she has never made.

And here is the second half, which is the part that decides Sunday. Whatever she thinks of the food, she is going to think it. That is outside your control entirely and has been the whole time.

What is inside your control is the company. And there is a direct relationship, which anybody who has hosted under pressure knows: a woman making something unfamiliar is in the kitchen, tense, half listening, and comes to the table already spent. A woman making the thing she always makes is sitting down, present, and actually there.

She was always going to have an opinion about the plate. The only question is whether you were in the room.

You have the half that was always yours, and a plate somebody will have an opinion about has never once been the part of Sunday you were in charge of. The Spirit of God is the one in that kitchen with a woman deciding what she is cooking for, and Galatians 1:10 separates the audience from the work.

What Sunday is, and it is plan one

So here is the assignment. Invite one person for one simple meal this month and cook the thing you can already make.

For Sunday, go back to plan one. The thing you always make, the one your hands know, and do it exactly the way you always do it with no improvements anywhere. Improvements on Sunday are the picture in your head doing the cooking.

And do not practice it this week. The thing you always make does not need practicing, and practicing it would turn it into the other kind of dish.

You are cooking what your hands already know rather than what a picture suggested, and a familiar dish has never once let anybody down on the day it mattered. Galatians 1:10 puts the question of the audience before any of the work, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that kitchen with a woman who went back to plan one.

Then the part that does the work, and it is one instruction: sit down and stay sitting. Do not get up to check things. Do not apologize for anything at any point in that meal, including the small pre-emptive remark that would arrive naturally when she pauses over the plate.

If she pauses, let the pause happen and say nothing into it. The pause is hers and filling it is how a woman hands over the whole evening.

You are leaving the pause alone rather than filling it, and a silence somebody else created has never once been yours to manage. The Spirit of God is the one at that table with a woman who stayed in her chair, and Galatians 1:10 asks whose approval the work is for.