I Let Them Think It Was Head Office

There were two decisions last month and only one of them was theirs.

The first one really was policy. It came down, you ran it, and when somebody asked you said so and that was the end of it.

The second one was yours.

You looked at the situation, you thought about it for about a day, and you made a call. It was a defensible call. You would make it again.

And when it landed, and somebody was unhappy about it, and they said something about the way things get decided by people who are not in the building, you did not say anything.

You let it sit there.

Nobody asked you a direct question. That is what you have been telling yourself. Nobody said, was that you, and so you did not lie, and technically that is true.

And you know exactly what you did.

You put a decision of your own inside a space that had already been set aside for somebody else's, and you let the space take it.

It is now four weeks old. Nobody has raised it again. There is no problem, nothing broke, and every day that passes makes it slightly more awkward to say anything.

There is a verse about dealing truly and it uses a surprising word about the people who do it.

They that deal truly are his delight

Proverbs sets two things side by side and the second half is not what people expect.

Lying lips are abomination to the LORD: but they that deal truly are his delight. (Proverbs 12:22, King James Version)

Delight. Not approval. Not acceptance. Delight, which is what a person feels when they are actually pleased.

And notice the phrase it attaches to. They that deal truly. Not they that tell the truth when asked.

Dealing is broader than answering. It is how a person handles a matter, including what they leave standing when nobody is asking questions.

You have been offered delight rather than a clean record, and the Holy Spirit is the one who feels that about a person. Proverbs 12:22 puts it on dealing truly rather than on answering honestly, and the offer has been open for four weeks.

Now the first half, because it will help to be precise rather than harsh.

Lying lips. That is an active thing. It is a mouth saying something untrue.

You did not do that. There has been no false sentence anywhere in this, and it is worth being accurate about that, because a woman who calls herself a liar over this will not be able to act.

You are not on the wrong side of that verse, and it is written that lying lips are the abomination rather than a silence nobody questioned. The Spirit of God is the one who is precise about that, and Proverbs 12 makes the distinction itself.

But the verse does not stop at avoiding the first half. It offers something.

Dealing truly is a positive thing that a person can do, and there is delight attached to it, and that is what is available here rather than an accusation.

You have something to gain rather than something to atone for, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is pleased by it. Scripture attaches delight to the one who deals truly, and Proverbs 12:22 is where the delight is named.

Why it matters that it was yours

Let me name what the borrowed space is actually costing, because it is not your conscience.

It is costing your people something. Every time a decision of yours goes into the head office space, they learn that they cannot tell which is which.

That does two things. It makes them slightly more resentful of a set of people a thousand miles away who did not do that particular thing. And it makes your own decisions invisible, which means they never get to know how you actually think.

You have been putting your own judgment somewhere nobody can see it, and the written word puts the delight on the woman who deals truly rather than on the one who is never caught. The Spirit of God is the one who cares about what those people can see, and Proverbs 12 is where the value is placed.

And there is something about you in it too.

A woman who can put a hard decision into somebody else's space will do it again, because it works. It is not a moral collapse. It is a tool, and tools get used.

Four weeks is the moment to put the tool down, and four weeks is much easier than four years.

You are able to put this down now rather than later, and the Holy Spirit is the one who catches something in a person while it is still one instance. It is written that dealing truly is the thing God delights in, and He is catching it now.

Go back and say it was yours

So here is the thing to do, and it is one sentence, and it is not a confession.

Find the person who was unhappy. Say: that decision last month was mine, not head office. I should have said so at the time.

Then stop. Do not explain the reasoning. Do not defend the decision. Do not apologize for the decision, because you would make it again.

You are owning something rather than confessing anything, and Proverbs 12:22 says they that deal truly are his delight. The Spirit of God is the one present in that sentence, and He is not disappointed by a woman who took four weeks.

Notice what stays intact. The decision stands. The rule that came down separately stands. Nothing about the arrangement is criticized and nothing is undermined.

What changes is that one person now knows which of the two decisions was made by the woman standing in front of them, and that is the whole of what needs to change.

You have a sentence that costs the arrangement nothing at all, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it after that. The written word puts the delight on the dealing rather than on the outcome, and Proverbs 12:22 is where the delight sits.

Then open in the morning and go on running the building the way you run it.