She Flinches When People Are Kind

Bryony noticed it in a shop.

The woman behind the counter, who did not know her, said, "Oh, that's a lovely coat," in the ordinary way people say things, and Bryony felt her whole body go one step back. Not visibly. Nothing anybody would see. But inside, something dropped into a stance, and the stance said: what is this for.

She has been out a year and two months.

She has her own place, a job she has had since before, a sister she sees, and a cat that is entirely too old and that she loves in a way she does not examine. Everything, on paper, is fine. Better than fine. She is not in danger and has not been for over a year.

And she cannot take a compliment. She cannot take a favor. When a colleague brought her a coffee in November she spent forty minutes working out what it was about, and by lunchtime had convinced herself she had been given the coffee because she looked ill.

She is aware this is strange. She is not a stupid woman. That is the exhausting part: she watches herself do it and cannot stop doing it.

Here is the day it caught.

Her sister, who has been careful with her for a year, said on the phone, "I'm proud of you, you know."

And Bryony said, "Don't."

Just that. Out loud. Sharply. To her sister, who has done nothing but hold her up since the day she left.

And there was a silence on the phone, and her sister said, "Okay," gently, and moved on to something else, and Bryony sat there afterward with her hand over her mouth.

You know that. Out, safe, and the kindness is the thing you cannot handle. And you cannot say that to the people being kind, because saying it to them is one more thing done to somebody who has been nothing but good to you.

He speaks tenderly in the wilderness

Let me put down what I am not doing here, so you can stop bracing.

I am not going to tell you what you came out of, and I am not going to give you a verdict on anybody in it. I am not going to tell you how long this lasts. And I am not going to tell you to receive kindness better, because that is an instruction to feel differently, and nobody has ever once succeeded at that by being told.

What I will do is show you a sentence in Hosea that is stranger and kinder than it first looks.

Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.Hosea 2:14

Speak comfortably is the old rendering. The Hebrew is speak to her heart, and it is the phrase used elsewhere for a man courting a woman, or somebody quietly reassuring a person who has had a fright. It is tender speech. Close speech. The voice you use when someone is not ready to be spoken to loudly.

And where does He do it? In the wilderness. He brings her there in order to do it.

Now, why would tenderness require a wilderness. Because a person can only receive that kind of speech somewhere without noise in it. In the crowded place, with everybody talking and everybody wanting something, tender speech does not get through, and anything that sounds like kindness gets checked for what it is for.

You are in a place God has used deliberately for tender speech, and the emptiness of it is the reason rather than the punishment. Hosea 2:14 has Him bringing her into the wilderness in order to speak to her heart, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries that off the page and into a shop where somebody complimented a coat.

And notice what He does not do. He does not require her to be able to receive it first. He does not ask her to stop flinching as a condition of the speaking. He brings her out and speaks softly and the softness is the whole method.

You have never been asked to be able to take it before He would say it, and there is no verse anywhere that makes tenderness conditional on the ability to accept it. It is written that He speaks to the heart in the wilderness, and the Holy Spirit is what makes an ancient tenderness a present one.

The flinch is not ingratitude

Now let me be careful, because this is exactly where somebody gets hurt.

That moment on the phone was not cruelty and it was not a failure of love toward a sister who has been faithful for a year. It was a reflex. And a reflex is not a decision, and treating it as one is how people end up ashamed of their own nervous systems.

Here is what a flinch actually is. For a long time, in that other place, kindness was information. It meant something was coming, or something was owed, or something was being set up. Bryony learned to read kindness as a signal, and she learned it accurately, and being right about it kept her safe for years.

The reading has not switched off. It cannot switch off just because the data changed. It is going to take exactly as long as it takes.

You are not being examined on your reflexes, and God has never once graded a person on the speed of their recovery. Psalm 103:14 says He knows our frame and remembers that we are dust, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that knowing a mercy rather than a technicality.

And I want to name the specific thing that hurts most about this, because it is not the flinching. It is what the flinching costs other people. Bryony said don't to her sister and heard it land, and the worst part of her week was not the compliment in the shop, it was the sound of a good woman saying okay gently and moving on.

You have not been disqualified from love by the way your body answers it, and the people who stayed are not keeping a tally. 1 Corinthians 13:7 says love bears all things and endures all things, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that describe real people rather than an ideal nobody meets.

Say this now rather than later, because I would rather say it and not be needed. If the year has gone somewhere darker than jumpy, or if there are hours where the safety itself feels unbearable, do not carry that alone. Tell somebody this week. Your sister, a friend, your doctor, a counselor, or the 988 crisis line if you live in the United States. That is not me telling you a thing about what you came out of. That is me refusing to leave you sitting with your hand over your mouth by yourself.