When You Dread Facing Someone

Half past four in the morning.

The worst of the dark is behind you, though the window doesn’t show it yet. Somewhere a person is asleep who you’ll have to face, today or soon, and part of you has rehearsed what to say to them half the night. In an hour or so the first car will go by on the road, and the day will start whether the speech is ready or not.

Ask people how they keep the peace with someone they’ve wronged, and the honest answer is usually distance. Don’t call. Skip the reunion. Let enough years pile up that the old trouble gets buried under them. It isn’t peace, exactly, but it’s quiet, and quiet can pass for peace for a long time.

This is a story about a man who tried that for twenty years, and about the morning the distance ran out.

His name was Jacob, and he had a twin brother named Esau. It’s one of the oldest stories in the Bible, from when families lived in tents and moved with their flocks. Esau was born first, by minutes, and grew up a hunter. Jacob stayed close to home, and he was the clever one.

Twice Jacob took what was Esau’s by right. The second time, he dressed up as Esau and lied to their father, who was old and nearly blind, to get the blessing meant for the oldest son. In that world a father’s blessing wasn’t a kind wish. It was the family’s future, spoken out loud, and it couldn’t be unsaid. Esau found out, and swore that as soon as their father died, he would kill his brother.

Jacob ran to his mother’s family, far off, and stayed twenty years. He married, had eleven sons, built up flocks. Then God told him to go home.

Home was where Esau was.

He started carefully, sending messengers ahead who called Esau “my master” and Jacob “your servant.” They came back with no reply. Just news. Esau was coming to meet him, and four hundred men were coming with him.

The story says Jacob was in great fear and distress. He split his household into two camps, so that if Esau attacked one, the other might get away. Then he prayed. He told God he didn’t deserve any of the kindness he’d been shown, and he said, in so many words, that he was afraid.

Then he did what a lot of us do. He sent things instead of himself.

He chose well over five hundred animals: goats, sheep, camels with their calves, cows, bulls, donkeys. He sent them in separate herds, so Esau would meet them in waves. The story lets us hear exactly what he was thinking.

I will appease Esau with the gift that is going before me. After that I can face him, and perhaps he will accept me.

After that I can face him. Goats first, then sheep, then camels, then cattle, then donkeys, and somewhere at the back of all those animals, eventually, his face.

That night he sent his family across a river ford and stayed behind, alone. The story says a man came and wrestled with him until daybreak. Near the end of it, the man asked to be let go, because the day was breaking. Jacob wouldn’t let go without a blessing. He came out of it with a new name, Israel, and a hip knocked out of joint. The sun came up on him limping. He called the place Peniel, which means “face of God,” because, he said, he had seen God face to face and was still alive.

He’d wanted to face his brother only after the gifts had softened him. Instead, the night before, he met a face he couldn’t send anything ahead of.

Then he looked up and there was Esau, with the four hundred men.

Jacob lined up his family with Rachel, the wife he loved most, and her young son last of all. The story neither hides that nor scolds him. Then he did the one thing his whole plan had been built to avoid. He walked out in front of everyone, limping, toward his brother, bowing to the ground seven times on the way.

There was no speech. Esau didn’t wait for one.

Esau, however, ran to him and embraced him, threw his arms around his neck, and kissed him. And they both wept.

Here’s what hadn’t happened yet when Esau ran.

Jacob hadn’t apologized. There’s no “I’m sorry” anywhere in the meeting. The blessing was still taken. The twenty years were still gone. Four hundred armed men were still standing there. His hip was still out. Nothing explained, nothing settled, nothing paid back. Esau ran anyway.

Esau asked what all those herds were for. To win your favor, Jacob said, and called him “my lord.” Esau told him he already had plenty, and called him my brother. Before they parted, Jacob said my lord four more times. Esau never once said it back.

Jacob insisted. I have seen your face, and it is like seeing the face of God, since you have received me favorably.

The face he’d been hiding from all those years, and the face he’d met in the dark by the river, and he couldn’t tell them apart.

Then he pressed the gift on Esau one more time, and an older translation keeps a word the modern ones smooth over. Take, I pray thee, my blessing. Twenty years after he’d stolen a blessing from his brother, he was handing one back. Esau took it.

The story is honest about what came after. Jacob begged off traveling together and settled somewhere else. The peace was real. It didn’t make them close, and years later, when their father died, the two brothers stood together to bury him.

What this says about peace

It’s easy to believe peace with a person comes from staying away, or from getting everything right before you face them. In this story the herds didn’t settle anything, and the speech never got made. Peace came when he stopped sending things ahead and went himself, limping, before a single thing had been repaired.

It isn’t a promise. Not every Esau runs. Some come still angry, and sometimes distance is the only safe thing. What the story shows is narrower. The hiding was never peace. It was just quiet.

This morning

The gifts sent ahead. Jacob sent five hundred animals so he wouldn’t have to send himself. Some people send the card, the check, the message through a cousin. If that’s how you’ve been reaching someone, let today’s contact be one sentence that’s actually from you.

The fear before the meeting. Before he faced anyone, he said out loud that he was afraid. If the dreaded thing is on today’s calendar, the family lunch, the meeting with an old partner, the hospital room where they’ll be, say the fear plainly before you walk in. In the car is fine. You don’t have to be brave first.

Let them pick the word. Jacob kept saying “my lord,” and Esau kept saying “my brother.” If the person answers you more gently than you expected today, don’t argue them back into the harder version. Take the word they chose, and let the relationship be the size it can be.