Cecil

A kid in my third-grade class gave my wife and me a word we still use.

There was a boy in my third grade class named Cecil. Tall, lanky, kept to himself mostly.

One afternoon the room was dead quiet, everybody heads down working on something, and Cecil started saying it under his breath.

I feel funny.

I feel funny.

I feel funny.

Louder every time. Then he stood straight up, hollered it at the top of his lungs, threw open the classroom door and took off down the hallway yelling it the whole way.

We were eight years old. We thought it was the greatest thing that had ever happened in that building. I never did find out what was going on with Cecil.

But I’ve told that story enough times over the years that Ericha picked it up, and now it’s a word in our marriage. When something is off and neither of us can put a finger on it, one of us says it. Sometimes the whole sentence:

I’m feeling a little Cecil right now.

Usually just the name.

Cecil.

We’ve said it a lot this week.

Saturday Afternoon

We got home from three weeks on the road and went straight into the machine. Football practice, school supplies, calendars, the shape of a whole year showing up at the door before we’d finished unpacking. And underneath all of it, a season where a lot of things are moving at once and I can’t see the far end of any of them.

Saturday I got back from morning football practice with John and Max, worn out, and all I wanted was to sit with my wife.

So we went upstairs. Ericha had a blackberry bramble. I was ripping a Miller Lite. We had a Costco shrimp cocktail between us, which in our house is a scrimp cocktail, and I don’t remember when that started. She was ordering school supplies on the laptop. I was reading. Mostly we were cutting up and laughing at nothing on the in between.

Then we started talking about what Sunday was going to look like, and somewhere in the middle of that the real conversation opened up. Things are a little Cecil right now. We’re both trying to do our best. Neither of us said it well and it didn’t need to be said well.

Here’s the thing I want you to notice, because I almost missed it.

I wasn’t intentionally working on my marriage. I wasn’t trying to have that conversation. I had a beer and a shrimp cocktail sitting on our bed and no agenda at all, and one of the truest things either of us had said in two weeks rolled in.

What I’ve Been Doing Wrong for Years

A few weeks ago my spiritual director told me to stop working on my marriage.

Stop the serious talks. Stop trying to fix and optimize and improve it. Go have fun with your wife.

It rearranged something in ten days that years of effort never touched. What I hadn’t seen is that I’d turned my marriage into a project I was managing instead of a gift I was receiving.

And that’s the same instinct as Cecil in the hallway.

When something feels off, we move. We fill it. We start a project, overhaul the schedule, make a decision three months early just to stop the not knowing. Grown men don’t run down hallways hollering. We schedule a meeting about it instead, and we call it being intentional.

It’s the same thing. It’s motion so we don’t have to sit in the weird.

Last week I told you to sign the thing before you feel ready. I meant it. But not every impulse to move is the Holy Spirit. Sometimes it’s fear wearing a to do list.

She Was Greatly Troubled

When the angel came to Mary, Luke says she was greatly troubled, and that she tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.

Read that slowly. The single most important thing that ever happened to a human being arrived, and the first sensation was not clarity. It was disorientation. She felt funny.

And she didn’t bolt and she didn’t manage it. She stayed in the room and asked a question.

That’s the part worth taking with you. Feeling off is not evidence that God has left. Sometimes it’s the first sensation of something arriving that’s bigger than the categories you currently have. He rearranges furniture in the dark, and the disorientation you’re feeling is the sound of it moving.

Sometimes, though, funny is just tired. Sometimes it’s three weeks in a van and not enough sleep and a hard month. I’m not going to hand you a rule that makes every unsettled feeling into a prophecy. Discernment is work, and it’s often slow, and you don’t get to skip it.

But you can’t discern anything at a dead sprint.

So whatever is Cecil in your house right now.

You don’t have to name it tonight. You don’t have to solve it this week. And you don’t have to schedule a meeting about it.

Go sit with the people God actually gave you. Laugh at something stupid. Let the truth show up sideways, the way it usually does.

It’ll find you over a scrimp cocktail.

---

“But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.” — Luke 1:29

---