The Mother at the School Gate

She stands by the second bin now. It is a good spot. You can see the door and you are not in the group.

It happened gradually and there was no decision. In reception she stood in the middle with everybody else. In year two there was the thing at the party. In year four there was the letter that went to all the parents, which did not name him and did not need to. And now it is year six and there is a place at the far end of the railings where she stands, and everybody understands the arrangement including her.

They are not unkind. Two of them say hello properly. One of them, who she likes, does the sympathetic head tilt, which she has come to find worse than being ignored.

This morning there was another phone call. He is not a bad boy. That is the sentence she has said so many times that she can no longer hear whether it is true or just something she says. He is eleven and something in him goes off like a firework and then he cries about it for an hour afterwards, and none of the people at the other end of these railings has ever seen the crying part.

Somebody in her small group prayed over her on Wednesday for favor with people. Favor with the school. And she said amen and meant it.

Then this morning happened.

If you have ever known exactly where you sit in a group's estimation and stood in your allotted place to make it easier for everybody, you know that stretch of railings. And you know the sentence underneath: whatever favor is, it is clearly not with people, so either it is a nice idea or it skipped me, and I do not know which is worse at ten past three.

The word first, and it is not a popularity report

Let me stand by the bin with you and say the plain thing.

You have been given a verse in a small group as a promise about the playground. That is not anybody's fault, it is how the verse gets used, and it has now failed a test it was never entered into, and the failure has gone onto your account.

So let me set the word straight before we look at the verse.

Blessed does not mean well regarded. It means the favor of God is resting on a person, His face is turned toward them. It is a fact about where He is looking, and there is no version of it anywhere in Scripture that gets decided at a school gate.

Now the verse itself, and I want to read it whole, because it is almost never quoted whole.

Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart: so shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man.Proverbs 3:3-4

Look what the actual instruction is. It is not: get favor. It is: hold on to mercy and truth. Bind them on. Write them in. And the promise that follows is a proverb, which is a description of how life usually runs, and not a contract with a playground.

And notice the order in the last line. In the sight of God, and man. God first, and He is the half that is not a proverb but a certainty.

You have favor in the sight of God this afternoon, at the far end of the railings, and that half of the verse was never subject to the school's opinion. Proverbs 3:4 names God first on purpose, and it is the Holy Spirit who bears witness with your spirit about your standing, which is a testimony no parent at that gate is qualified to give or withhold.

Mercy and truth, which is exactly what you are doing

Now I want to point at what you are actually holding, because the verse names two things and you have both of them in your hands and nobody has told you.

Mercy. You have not given up on him. Eleven years, and the fireworks, and the hour of crying afterwards that nobody else has ever seen, and you are still standing at that gate at ten past three every single day. That is mercy and it is expensive and it is the first word in the verse.

Truth. You are not lying about him. You did not tell the school it never happened. You do not tell the small group he is misunderstood by everybody. You said this morning, on the phone, out loud, that it was not acceptable, and then you cried in the car and came here anyway. That is truth, which is the second word.

Mercy and truth are exactly the two that come apart under pressure. A mother under this much pressure usually drops one. She either goes to war with the school and defends everything, which is mercy without truth, or she gives up on the boy and agrees with the worst description of him to keep the peace, which is truth without mercy.

You have not dropped either. For three years.

You are wearing the two things that verse tells you to bind on, and you have been wearing them through the years the gate got harder. Proverbs 3:3 says bind them about thy neck, which is a thing worn where people can see it, and it is the Holy Spirit who is named as the one who bears mercy and gentleness as fruit, so what you have been carrying was grown in you rather than manufactured by you.

What I will not promise about the gate

Now let me be honest about the second half of that verse, because a proverb is not a promise and I will not sell it to you as one.

Favor in the sight of man is a general truth about how life tends to go, and it is a true one. Over a long time, people who carry mercy and truth are usually trusted. Usually. That is what a proverb is.

It is not a guarantee that the mothers by the door will change their minds this term, or that the school will, or that anybody at those railings will ever see the hour of crying. I do not know that and I would be lying to you if I dressed it up. Some of them may never move.

And I am not going to tell you this is a season with a purpose in it, or that God is building something in you through the gate. Nobody arranged your son's temperament as a curriculum for his mother. That is the comfortable ditch and it does damage.

Both halves. Standing by the second bin is not the withdrawal of His favor, and it is not His favor in a costume.

You are favored and you are standing at the far end, and both of those are true on the same sidewalk. Scripture puts the favor of God first in that verse and leaves the human half as a proverb, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a person able to hold a certainty and an uncertainty at once without collapsing them into a simpler story.

One more thing, plainly. If it ever stops being fireworks and becomes something you are frightened of, in him or for him, tell somebody who can act, that day. His school, your doctor, the people whose job it is. That is not disloyalty and it is not a lack of faith. It is mercy and truth together, which is the whole verse.