She Has Never Seen My Real Face

She is nineteen and she has never seen it.

Not once. You did it before she was awake when she was small, and you did it before she got home when she was at school, and now she is grown and comes and goes and the arrangement has continued because nobody ever reviewed it.

I want to say what this article is not, immediately, because I know exactly where a woman goes.

This is not about what you wear on your face. Nothing in this is a rule and there is no version of it that ends with you giving anything up.

It is about a fact that has never once occurred in your house, which is a different thing entirely.

The fact is that a girl has grown up in a home where a woman was never seen unfinished.

Not because it was hidden dramatically. Because it was arranged, gently, around her, for nineteen years, by somebody who loves her and was not thinking about it.

What has been in the room

Here is what a child learns, and it is not what a mother tells her.

She learns the shape of the days she was in. What happened. What did not happen. What was there in the room and what was never in the room.

Your daughter has been told, sincerely and often, that she does not need any of it. Every word of it was meant, and she has heard it, and it is true.

You are somebody whose words were all true and were never once the thing being watched, and a house learns from what it sees rather than from what it is told. Titus 2 says the older women are to teach the young women, and the Spirit of God is what puts a woman's own face into the lesson.

And she has also lived nineteen years in a house where a face was never once unfinished in front of her.

Those two are not equal in weight. One is a sentence and the other is a nineteen year condition, and a condition wins, every time, without argument, because a condition is not something a child evaluates. It is the world.

You are teaching from a condition rather than from a sentence, and no true thing said out loud has ever once outweighed nineteen years of a room. The Holy Spirit is what shows a woman what a house has been teaching without a word, and Titus 2 has an instruction about older women and younger ones.

And here is the second half, which is where the hope is, and it is a much smaller thing than you fear.

The condition can change with one evening.

Not with a conversation. Not with an apology, and not with an explanation, both of which would make it into a subject and put her in the position of having to respond to something.

One ordinary evening where a fact is different.

You are able to change a condition without ever making it a subject, and it has never once required a conversation with anybody. Scripture in Titus 2 puts teaching between women in the ordinary business of a household, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes an ordinary evening into an inheritance.

Teach the young women

There is an instruction in Titus about how one generation of women hands something to another.

That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children. (Titus 2:4, King James Version)

Look at where this teaching happens.

The whole passage around it is about ordinary domestic life. It is not about lectures and it is not about instruction in the formal sense. It is older women and younger women in the same houses, doing the same things, and the teaching happening in that.

Which means the classroom is a kitchen, and the curriculum is what actually goes on in it.

You are teaching in the place Scripture actually locates the teaching, and no formal conversation has ever once been where this happens. It is written in Titus 2 that the older women teach the young women, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman that her ordinary evenings are the lesson.

And notice what the older women are teaching in that passage.

To love their husbands, to love their children. It is entirely about how to live, and there is nothing in the list about appearance in either direction. Nothing about being presentable and nothing about not caring.

The subject is a life. And what a young woman needs to see, in order to learn how to live, is a life actually being lived in front of her, including the ordinary unfinished parts of it.

You are handing on a life rather than a standard, and no verse in that chapter has ever once been about how anybody looked. The Spirit of God is what puts the whole of an ordinary life in front of a daughter rather than the finished part of it, and the written word says that they may teach the young women.

One ordinary evening

So here is the assignment, and it is one evening in your own house.

Be in the same room as her once this week with nothing on your face.

Not an occasion. Not a conversation. Do not announce it, do not explain it, and do not watch to see whether she notices, because the watching would make it a moment.

An ordinary evening. She is on the sofa. You come in with a cup of tea and sit down and ask her about something.

You are teaching in an ordinary evening rather than in a conversation, and no daughter anywhere has ever once learned this from a sentence. Titus 2 says that they may teach the young women, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a sofa and a warm cup into instruction.

Here is what that gives her, and it is the whole point of this article. One data point. One evening, in nineteen years, in which a woman she loves was in a room unfinished and nothing whatever happened.

That is a very small thing and it goes in the way everything goes into a child, which is by being there.

You are able to put one ordinary evening into nineteen years, and it has never once needed to be announced to count. The written word in Titus 2 locates the teaching in the ordinary life of a household, and the Holy Spirit is what makes one evening on a sofa into care rather than into a lesson.