Her older girl rang on Tuesday and her younger girl rang on Thursday, and by Friday she could see the shape of the whole week.
Neither of them mentioned the other one directly. They never do. They talk around her, in a way that arrives at the same place every time, and the place is this: Mama, you were there, you know how she is, you know I was not the one who started it.
She was not there, as it happens. Not for the actual thing. She has only ever had it in two versions, and the two versions are so different that she has sometimes wondered whether they were even in the same room.
Three years now. Three Thanksgivings held twice. Her grandchildren do not know each other properly. She has a photograph on the hall wall of the four of them at the lake and she has not been able to take it down and cannot really look at it either.
And what she has noticed, and never said, is this: each one of them wants her to say it. But neither one of them wants her to say it to the other. They want a verdict delivered privately, in a phone call, where it costs nothing and changes nothing.
And here is what she has never said out loud in sixty-eight years: she does not know how to be a mother to both of her daughters at the same time any more, and nobody in that family has ever sat in the middle before her.
The gavel nobody gave you
Let me say the plain thing first, because it will not get said on either of those phone calls.
You were not made the judge of this. Not by God, not by either of those girls, and not by the accident of having given birth to both of them. What has happened is that two people in pain have each looked for the one person whose opinion would settle their own mind, and that person is you, and being asked is not the same as being appointed.
And you did not fail either of them by not settling it. You were not in the room.
You are somebody's mother rather than somebody's tribunal, and no year of this has been a failure on your part. Nobody is being kind to you here. Psalm 103:13 says that as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him, which puts the pitying in His hands and not on your shoulders, and the Holy Spirit is the one raising it now to take a weight off rather than to add one.
And Proverbs is unusually blunt about what one side of a story is worth.
He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbor cometh and searcheth him.Proverbs 18:17
Every account sounds right until the other one arrives. That is not cynicism about your daughters. It is the ordinary shape of a human telling a story about being hurt. And you have had two accounts, and both of them sounded just, and Proverbs says that is exactly what you should expect.
Refusing to judge is not the same as not caring
Refusing to judge is a position about your competence, not about your love. It says: I was not there, I am not qualified, and I will not hand either of you a weapon.
It is going to be misread. One or both of them will hear it as you taking the other one's side, at least for a while. That misreading is not a sign that you have done it badly.
You are free to love two people without ruling on either, and those two things were never the same act. Scripture says in 1 Corinthians 4:5 to judge nothing before the time until the Lord comes and brings the hidden things to light, and the Holy Spirit is at work in both of those women right now without waiting for a sentence from a woman on a telephone.
Where your part ends
Say this plainly and do not dress it up. Standing in the middle is never the same as walking into harm, and nothing here asks anybody back into anything unsafe. If what happened between them involved real harm to one of them, then that is not a dispute with two sides and nothing on this page treats it as one. Get whoever is at risk safe, tell one real person who can actually do something, and hold this: safety comes before peace, always.
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.Psalm 46:1
Very present. Not summoned. You are inside a help that was already in the room before the phone rang, and it does not depend on you having the right words for either girl. Psalm 46:1 puts the help in God rather than in your ability to settle something, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the being-present, which is the whole of what that verse promises.
The phone calls were never the enemy. Two daughters who still ring their mother every week are two daughters who are still reachable, and there are mothers who would give anything for that.
What is costing you is not the calls. It is that you have accepted a seat you were never elected to, and from that seat every conversation is a hearing.
> Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven. > Luke 6:37
Read the first two words as a door rather than as a rule. You are released from the bench in your own family, and the release does not have to be announced to be real. Luke 6:37 takes the judging out of your hands rather than adding a duty to them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds a woman steady the first time she declines to answer the question she is always asked.
Nothing here requires a conversation. Nothing here asks you to tell either daughter what you have decided, explain a new policy, or say one word about this article. What is coming back to you is smaller and much heavier than a resolution: the right to know that this split is not yours to settle, and to stop taking the stand every Tuesday.
Declare this over yourself
Say them out loud, right where you are sitting. Not in your head. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the authority to say what is true about your own life was given to you, and neither of those girls can hand it over or take it back. Scripture is the ground under every word, and the Holy Spirit is what makes it living instead of loud.
Jesus set the measure at a seed, and He did not set it that low to shame anybody with how little she was holding. He set it there because no mountain ever moved on the size of a woman's faith. It moved because somebody opened her mouth at it. So speak, and leave the rest with Him, because whatever He does with those two is His and always was.
- Verdict they keep asking me for, you are not mine to give and God never handed me the gavel. Proverbs 18:17 says the first account always sounds just until the other one walks in, and I have had two and I was not in that room. In the name of Jesus I am stepping down off this bench.
- Fear that one of them will hear silence as a side, you have no authority in this house tonight. The Holy Spirit is at work in both of my girls, and 1 Corinthians 4:5 says the hidden things wait for the Lord to bring them to light and not for me. I am their mother today, and I am not the judge of either of them.
- Lord, You were in that room three years ago and You are the only one who was. I thank You, because Your word says the dark and the light are alike to You and You have never once asked me to guess. Whatever You do with those two is Yours, and both of them are mine, and I am loving them the same today.
Proverbs 18:17
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