I Organize Every Trip And Never Get One

Everybody else went on the trip.

You were there. You have the photographs, some of which have you in them. But if somebody asked what you did on that day, you would find yourself describing what happened rather than what you experienced, because you were not really in it. You were running it.

You knew where the bag was. You knew what time the last one back was. You were tracking who had eaten, who needed the toilet, who was about to become difficult, and how much of the day was left. That is a job, and you did it, and while you were doing it the day went past you.

And then somebody said in the car on the way home that it had been really nice, and you agreed, and you felt something you would not have wanted to say out loud.

Let me be careful about one thing before we go on, because this is where this subject usually goes wrong.

This is not an article about your partner, or your mother, or whoever else was there not carrying it. I am not going to build you a case. If this turned into a list of what somebody else should have noticed, you would finish it more resentful than you started and nothing in your family would change, and the resentment would cost you more than the planning does.

This is about you being at the thing. That is all it is about.

Cumbered about much serving

There is a woman in Luke who is doing everything, and what is said about her is more sympathetic than people usually make it.

But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. (Luke 10:40, King James Version)

Cumbered about much serving.

Cumbered means weighed down, loaded, carrying something heavy. It is not a word for fussing. The text does not say she was making a fuss, it says she was under a load.

And the serving was real. Somebody had to do it. That house had guests and food does not appear, and the work she was doing was necessary work that mattered and that nobody else was doing.

And notice what she says. She does not say Mary is lazy. She says she hath left me to serve alone, which is a sentence about being on her own in it, and then she asks the Lord to notice.

That is the ache, and it is the same one you have. Not that the work exists. That you are in it by yourself while everybody else is at the thing.

You are carrying something real, and the ache of carrying it alone has never once been a fuss. Luke 10:40 names her as weighed down under genuine work and lets her say plainly that she is on her own in it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the pettiness out of a complaint a person has been ashamed of.

Being there is a choice you can make

Here is what I want to offer, and it is not the resolution of that story, because that is between the Lord and Martha and I am not going to preach it at you.

What I want to say is smaller and it is yours to do.

You are allowed to stop managing for twenty minutes while you are there.

Not the whole day. You do carry it and that is real and some of it genuinely cannot be put down. But twenty minutes where you are not tracking anything, where you sit down and let the day happen without your hand on it, is available to you and you have not been taking it.

And I think the reason is not that nobody would let you. It is that the moment you stop tracking, you can feel everything you are not doing, and it is genuinely uncomfortable to sit in that. So you keep moving, because moving is easier than the discomfort of stopping.

That discomfort passes at about the four minute mark. It is worth going through it, because on the other side is the day, which is happening, and which you paid for and arranged and have not been to.

You are able to put it down for twenty minutes, and the day has never once required you to hold it every second to happen. The written word puts a woman under a heavy load and lets her name it out loud, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a person sit down inside their own arrangements.

Hand one part over and do not check it

So here is the assignment, and the second half is the difficulty.

Hand one part of the next plan to somebody else, and do not check it.

One part. The food, or the tickets, or what happens after lunch. Give it to somebody with the words: this is yours, I am not doing it.

And then do not check it. Not indirectly, not with a casual question, not by mentioning at breakfast that you were wondering about the sandwiches. Not checking is the whole exercise. Handing it over while monitoring it is not handing it over, it is adding a management task to a delegation, and you will end up doing both.

It may go worse than if you had done it. Probably it will, the first time. That is the price of the twenty minutes, and it is a low price.

Luke 10:40 lets the weight be named rather than requiring it to be carried silently, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with somebody who lets something be done differently than they would have done it.

You are able to hand one thing over completely, and it has never once needed to be done your way to have been done. Luke 10:40 names the load and names the aloneness, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present while a person deliberately does not check.