I Stopped Saying My Age Out Loud

Nobody announced it. There was no decision.

But somewhere in the last few years, your own age became something you handle rather than something you say.

You know exactly what I mean. Somebody asks, in a form or a conversation or a joke at a table, and there is a small piece of work that happens before you answer. A deflection, maybe. A laugh. A vague answer that is technically true. Or the number, but with something attached to it, an apology or a joke or a comment about how it happened so fast.

And you have got good at it. So good that nobody has ever noticed, which is the sign of real skill. It takes more care than most of the actual care in your week.

Here is what I want to look at, and it is not the number.

The number is not the problem. Forty seven is a fact about how many times the earth has been round the sun since you got here. It has never once done anything to anybody. It cannot. It is arithmetic.

The handling is the problem, and the handling is what has become a job.

What concealing teaches

There is a thing that happens when you handle something carefully for long enough, and it is not what anybody intends.

You learn from your own handling.

We work out what is dangerous from how we treat it. Nobody has to be told a hot pan is hot after the first time. And a woman who has spent six years managing a number in conversation has been giving herself a lesson six years long, every time, without meaning to, and the lesson is: this is a thing that has to be managed.

The number never said that. Your own careful handling said it.

You are learning from the way you carry a thing rather than from anything the thing ever did, and that number has never once been dangerous. The Holy Spirit is what shows a woman where a lesson actually came from, and Psalm 90 asks God for something to do with days and their number.

Now the second cost, which is quieter and which happens in rooms.

Every time you deflect, a small distance goes into the conversation. Not a lie. Just a slight step back from somebody, over something that does not matter, and the other person feels it without knowing what it was.

Do that four hundred times over six years, in small ways, with people you love, and you have built something. Not a wall. More like a gauze.

You are paying for the handling in a currency nobody itemizes, and no number has ever once cost you what the managing of it costs. Scripture in Psalm 90 asks for days to be numbered rather than hidden, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a small distance out of a woman's conversations.

So teach us to number our days

There is a prayer in the ninetieth Psalm that is short and does the opposite of what fear does with a number.

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. (Psalm 90:12, King James Version)

Number our days. Count them. Say how many.

That is a request to know, and to say, and to have the figure in the open. And it is prayed by a man who is entirely realistic about mortality, in a psalm that spends its first ten verses being blunt about how short a life is.

He is not hiding from any of it. He is asking to be taught how to count properly.

You are made for a counting rather than a concealing, and there has never once been a prayer in Scripture asking God to help somebody avoid a number. It is written in Psalm 90 that we ask to be taught to number our days, and the Holy Spirit is the one who puts a woman's own years back in her own mouth.

And look at the second half, which is the reason for the first.

That we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. The counting is for something. It is not morbid arithmetic, and it is not a reckoning. It is what makes a person able to spend their life on the right things.

Which means the managed number is actually a working figure. It tells a person where she stands, and knowing where she stands is what makes it possible to decide anything.

A woman who cannot say her own age out loud has mislaid a tool she needs.

You are holding a working figure rather than a verdict, and it has never once been given to anybody as a score. The Spirit of God is what turns a dreaded number into a usable one, and the written word says so teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

Once, plainly, to one person

So here is the assignment, and it is one sentence in one conversation.

Say your age out loud, once, to one person this week, with nothing attached.

No joke. No apology. No comment about where the time went, no reference to feeling younger, no I know, I know. Just the number, said the way you would say your shoe size.

That is much harder than it sounds and there is a reason it is worth doing.

You are being asked for one number out loud and for nothing else, and there has never once been a confession attached to it. Psalm 90 says so teach us to number our days, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes counting an act of wisdom rather than an admission.

The attachments are the handling. That is what they are. A joke about it is a small piece of management, and every joke teaches you the lesson again. Saying it plain is the first time in six years that the number has been allowed to be ordinary.

And you may find you cannot get it out without adding something. That is genuinely useful information about how deep the habit goes, and it is not a failure, and I would try it again the following week.

You are able to say a plain true thing without decorating it, and there has never once been a rule that a number required an escort. The written word in Psalm 90 asks God for the counting of days, and the Holy Spirit is what makes one plain sentence into care rather than into a performance of confidence.