Say It Soft

Of all the Jones children, Ava Grace speaks the least — and somehow says the most. For six years her family has treasured the way she can put the truest thing into the fewest words, because those words always came wrapped in love. But this week the love slips off, and the true things start coming out sharp. When Addison steps out one Sunday morning in an outfit she took a brave chance on, Ava Grace looks at her with those big honest eyes and says the plain true thing — and watches, for the very first time, a face fall because of her. The colors really were fighting. Being right does not help one bit. With Mom’s honey, Dad’s open Bible, and a lesson about pleasant words, Ava Grace learns that truth and kindness were always meant to travel together — and that the very same true thing can be handed over soft. Scripture: Ephesians 4:15; Proverbs 16:24 (KJV).

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SPEAKER_01 1:19

Welcome to the Jones Family Chronicles. For life at school, home, and church is always full of lessons, laughter, and love. Meet Dad, the pastor's assistant, Mom, the heart of the home, and their five bright and lively kids. Allison, Addison, Anna, Ava Grace, and little Andy, who somehow always managed to turn ordinary days into extraordinary adventures. So gather round, open your heart, and let's discover together the joy of faith, family, and the timeless truths of God's Word. This is the Jones Family Chronicles. All right, kids, gather close. Papa has a story for you about your favorite family, the Joneses.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Of all five Jones children, Ava Grace said the least.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

She was six, and she watched a great deal more than she spoke. And when the others were filling a room with noise, she was usually somewhere down near the floor taking it all in with those big serious eyes. But every so often, not very often, which was exactly what gave it its power, Ava Grace would open her mouth and lay the whole truth of a thing out on the table in about six words, and the room would go still. Because she was right, and everyone knew it. She had told Allison the night after Addison walked trembling up to the front of the church to say her verse, you didn't look scared. And when Addison said back that she had been so scared, Ava had only nodded and said, I know, that's better. She had looked at a brand new believer coming up dripping out of the water and said, She's brand new. She had looked at a bare stretch of dirt where the whole family stood fretting over some seeds and said, The seeds are still down there, and settled the entire matter. That was her gift. She could not have told you it was a gift, but the reason it always landed soft all those years was that it came out of love before it ever came out of her mouth. The truth and the love arrived together in the same six words, and nobody could have pulled them apart if they tried. Which is why the week papa is about to tell you about caught everybody so off guard. Because that was the week the love slipped off. And the true thing started coming out with just an edge. Nobody could say quite why. Maybe she was tired. The tail end of summer does that. Maybe six year olds simply go through a season of it. Whatever the reason, the words that week came out as true as ever and somehow bare, stripped of the thing that used to cushion them. She told Alison, who was proudly unveiling a color-coded chart for the last two weeks of vacation, nobody's gonna do all that, which was true.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Allison folded the chart back up and walked off.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

She told Anna right in the middle of a story, that's not how it happened, which was also true, and which stopped Anna cold, an event roughly as rare as an eclipse. She told Mom at supper that the chicken was dry. It was a little. But Mom set down her fork and looked at her youngest daughter for a long moment. The way a person looks at weather that might be changing. None of it was mean. Ava Grace did not have mean in her. It was just true. With all the tenderness taken out, like honey with the sweet scraped off. And it left small marks all over the week that nobody knew quite what to do about.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

Then came Sunday morning and Addison's outfit.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Now you have to understand what an outfit was to Addison. It was never about being fussy. For Addison the details were where the meaning lived. If she got the small things right, the whole thing said what she wanted it to say without her having to find the words, which she was not always good at finding. Getting dressed was how Addison talked. And that Sunday she had tried something braver than usual. She had reached right past her safe, careful, matching things and put together a bold combination, a deep coral and a mustard gold, and a print with both of them in it. Something with some daring in it. Something that said she was nine now and not so little anymore. She was proud of it. She was also, though she would have died before admitting it, just a little scared of it. She came into the room already half braced. Well, she said, and turned around once slowly so the skirt kind of flew out. Ava Grace looked up at her from the floor. She looked at her the way she looked at everything, straight through to the true middle of it, and she said in four plain words, the colors are fighting.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

They were a little. That was the terrible part.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

The coral and the gold had not quite made peace, and Addison had felt it herself in the mirror and hoped she was wrong, and now here was the one person in the house who was never wrong about this exact thing, saying it right out loud. Addison's face fell. All of it all at once, the pride, the daring, and the nine years old now, it just came down like a curtain. She did not say a word. She just turned around, went back to her room, and a minute later she came out in the safe gray thing she always wore, with all the color gone out of her. She did not turn around slowly in it, she didn't ask anybody about it. The whole kitchen had gone quiet in a way the Jones kitchen almost never did. Even Anna, who had an opinion about most things and all of them out loud, didn't say a word. She only watched Addison go by in the gray and then looked over at Ava Grace on the floor, and for once in her life kept still. Ava Grace sat on the floor and did not understand what had just happened. She just told the truth. She always told the truth. The colors were fighting. She had seen it plain as anything, and telling what she saw plain as anything was the thing Ava Grace did. The thing everybody had always said was so wonderful about her. She had done exactly the wonderful thing. And her sister's face had fallen like it fell off a shelf. Ava Grace was small, but she was not slow. And she sat there turning it over with those big eyes until she arrived all by herself at the piece of it that mattered. She had done that. The falling face was hers. She had made it happen with four true words, and being right about the colors had not helped one single bit. In fact, the rightness was the very thing that made it land so hard. For the first time in her whole life, Ava Grace had said a true thing and wished she could have reached out and caught it and pulled it back. She looked down at her own two hands the way you do when you have dropped something and it is broken on the floor, and she couldn't think of a single thing to do with them. Mom found her still sitting there after the others had gone out to the car. She didn't scold her, she got down on the floor beside her instead and she said I know you didn't mean to hurt her. I just told the truth, Ava Grace said. It came out small and confused and well almost a question. You did, said Mom. You told it exactly right. The colors were fighting. She smoothed Ava Grace's hair back off her forehead. Here's the thing though, baby, and it's a big one. So hold still and get this. A true thing is like honey. It's good. It's one of the best things there is. But you can hand somebody honey gentle in a spoon or you can throw the whole jar at 'em.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

Same honey. It just lands different.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Ava Grace thought about that. You've got the truest eyes in this family, Mom said. I wouldn't change that for all the world. But the truth and the kindness are supposed to ride in the same wagon, baby. When you leave the kindness home, the truth shows up all sharp corners. You didn't stop telling the truth this week, you just stopped bringing the love with it. It used to come by itself, Ava Grace said, which was the wisest thing anybody said all day. And she was six. It did, Mom agreed, and now you're getting big enough that sometimes you'll have to bring it on purpose. That's most of what growing up is, baby. Doing on purpose what used to come all by itself. Ava Grace leaned her head against Mom's arm and was quiet a while. I want to fix it, she said at last. Not I'm sorry, which she was, but I want to fix it, which was more like Ava Grace, who had never once been content to feel a thing without also being able to do something about it. That evening, Dad reached for the Bible without looking, the way he always did, and said he wanted to read them two short things that went together Ephesians four and fifteen, but speaking the truth in love may grow up into him in all things which is the head, even Christ. Speaking the truth, Dad said, it still says speak it. He never tells us to swallow the truth or dress it up in a lie, but look how he wants it carried. He tapped the page in love, the truth in love. Both of them. Or it isn't the whole commandment. But then he turned to Proverbs and read them one other. Proverbs sixteen and twenty four. Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones. Health to the bones, Dad said, and he looked without making a show of it at his youngest daughter. A true word said kind doesn't only miss hurting somebody, it can go and make them feel well. That's how strong a pleasant word is. It's medicine. Ava Grace sat there through all of it, and across the room Addison sat very still too, in the gray dress, still a little folded up, and the two of them did not look at each other, and both of them heard every word. Ava Grace found Addison the next morning before anybody else was up, sitting on the edge of her bed with the coral and gold laid out beside her. She wasn't wearing it, she was just looking at it. The way you look at something you are no longer sure you are allowed to love. Ava Grace climbed up next to her. She had been thinking about it half the night, in that slow, careful way she thought about things, and she had worked out what was true and what was kind, and this was the new part, how to carry both of them at the very same time. You see more colors than anybody, she said. That's why yours are always the prettiest.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Nobody else even tries the brave ones. Addison looked up.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

Those two were fighting, Ava Grace went on gently, and she didn't take it back, because it had been true and true things don't stop being true. But I don't think they hate each other. I think they just needed one more friend in the middle. Addison looked down at the coral, she looked over at the gold, and she went still in a whole different way now. The way she went when she had found the one small detail that held everything together. A mental color, she said slowly. Something to hold hands with both of them. She was already up and going for her drawer. Cream, no, a soft brown, a belt maybe, and the little brown shoes. And off she went into the eight careful minutes, except that this time Ava Grace stayed and watched, and handed her the belt when she pointed at it. When Addison came into the room this time, the coral, the gold and now the quiet, soft brown threaded through it in the middle, holding the whole thing together, she turned around slowly till the skirt went out a little bit and she looked frankly wonderful. Braver than the gray and entirely herself. Well, she said. This time she said it to Ava Grace. Ava Grace considered her sister with the full weight of those honest eyes. Now they're singing together, she said, which was true. And which was kind. And which arrived, for the first time in a week, in the same few words, riding in the same wagon, exactly the way it was always meant to. Addison hugged her so hard she squeaked. I'm so sorry I said it mean, Ava Grace told her, muffled from somewhere inside the hug. The fighting part was true, but I forgot the honey. Addison, who had spent her whole life having feelings she could not quite find words for, thought that was just about the most exactly right thing anybody had ever said to her. The rest of them came through in their usual weather. Allison approved of the belt on organizational grounds. Anna said about nine things, and Andy looked up at Addison in all her colors, threw both arms straight up over his head and shouted happy, which the whole family agreed was the correct review. At church, Ava Grace tried her new soft honey on for size. She told older sister May that her hat was her very favorite one. She told Brother Thompson, sitting where he always sat now with Sister Beverly beside him, the two of them still content to wait on the Lord's own time, that he looked happy. He said he was, which was all true. She was just handing it out over gentle now, one true kind thing at a time. Now at home, Mom looked around at all her children gathered in close and said she hoped they would remember the smallest Jones and her hardest week. Because the world is full of people who will tell you the truth like they're throwing it at you, and just as full of people so afraid of hurting you that they will never tell you the truth at all. And both of them, every one, have only got hold of half of it.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

The Lord asked for the whole thing, Mom said the truth and the love in the same wagon. So say it, children, but say it soft.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

Now who's ready for brownies?