I Spent What We Did Not Have

You did it in April and you have not told anybody.

It was not a large amount by anybody else's standards. That is part of what makes it hard to say out loud, because it sounds like nothing when you say it, and it is not nothing here.

And you did not do it for yourself. You did it because your children were going to be the only ones with nothing to say in September, and you could not stand it, and there was a way to make it happen that you knew at the time was a bad idea.

So it happened. And it was good. That is the part nobody writes about. It was a genuinely good four days and they still talk about it.

And since then you have been carrying it on your own, and it has got heavier every month, and there is a specific kind of tiredness that comes from being the only person who knows a number.

I am not going to tell you what to do about the money. That is not what this site is for and I would be no use at it.

What I want to do is get at the thing underneath it, because I do not think you overspent out of weakness. I think you did it because you believed something that is not true, and the belief is still there, and it will do this again.

A man's life consisteth not

There is a sentence of Christ's about possessions that is usually preached at people who have plenty, and it belongs just as much to somebody who has almost none.

And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. (Luke 12:15, King James Version)

You have a word from Christ that a life is not built out of what is in it, and no April of yours has ever once been able to add to a childhood or take from it. Luke 12:15 says a life does not consist in the abundance of things rather than saying abundance is wrong, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a mother hear that as relief rather than as a rebuke.

Now, I want to be careful about the word covetousness, because it is easy to hear that as an accusation against you and it is not the shape of what happened.

Covetousness in that passage is a settled conviction that a life needs a certain quantity of things in it in order to be a life. And the warning is not moral scolding. It is correction of a factual error. He says a life does not consist in that, which is a statement about how reality is put together.

You were operating on a belief about how a childhood is made, and no amount of loving your children has ever once made that belief true. It is written that a life does not consist in the abundance of things possessed, which is why the correction is factual rather than moral, and the Spirit of God is what changes a belief in a mother rather than shaming her for having held it.

And notice who He says it to. The crowd, not one man. He is not exposing anybody. He is stating publicly how life actually works, and He does it before He tells the story that follows.

That matters, because the thing you have been doing since April is treating this as a private moral failure to be managed alone. The passage does not treat it that way. It treats it as a wrong idea being corrected out loud.

You are able to hold what you did as a wrong idea rather than a moral collapse, and eleven months of carrying it alone has never once made it the second thing. The Holy Spirit is the one who reclassifies a thing correctly in a woman's chest, and Luke 12 has the correction spoken to a crowd rather than whispered to one guilty person.

What the money was standing in for

Now the useful part, and it starts with a question about September.

What exactly were you buying?

Not the four days. Underneath that. My guess is it was a place among other children. Something to say. Standing. The thing you did not have at their age and have never forgotten not having.

And that is not greed. That is a mother trying to give a child something she knows the absence of from the inside.

You are able to see what the money was standing in for, and understanding it has never once been you excusing yourself. The Spirit of God is what shows a woman the real transaction underneath an ordinary decision, and Luke 12:15 goes straight at what a person believes a life is made of.

Here is the difficulty, and I think you already know it. The thing you were buying is not for sale. Standing among other children is not something a parent can obtain that way, and if it were, it would need doing again every September, forever, at a rising price.

Which is the trap. Because the belief that produced April is still in the house, and next August it will produce the same reasoning with better arguments.

You are able to take out the belief rather than just resolve to be more careful, and no promise to yourself has ever once been strong enough to hold against next August. It is written that a life does not consist in the abundance of the things a person possesses, and the Holy Spirit is the one who removes a conviction rather than asking a woman to fight it every year.

And here is what your children actually got in those four days, which is worth knowing precisely: they got their mother in an unhurried mood for four days. That is what they still talk about. It was never the four days that did it.

Tell one adult, then go out for nothing

So here is the assignment, and it has two halves that go together.

First: tell one adult the actual number.

One person. Whoever is safe. Not a professional and not a crowd. Somebody who is on your side and who will not do anything with it.

You are able to choose the one person rather than tell everybody, and telling one has never once been the same thing as making it public. The Spirit of God is the one who puts a safe person in front of a woman at the right moment, and Luke 12:15 has the correction spoken out in the open while the person carrying it is never once named.

And the actual number, not the softened version. The reason the number matters is that a specific figure can be looked at, and a shame carried without a figure grows to whatever size it likes.

You are able to say the real figure out loud once, and saying it has never once been you handing anybody the right to judge you. Luke 12:15 has the correction spoken openly rather than kept private, and the Spirit of God is the one who is in the room when a woman says the true number to somebody who loves her.

If there is real trouble here, and only you know whether there is, then this is also the point where a person who has been carrying it alone tells somebody who can help. That is not a defeat, and it is not the subject of this article, and it is right there for you if it applies.

Second, in the same week: take the children somewhere that costs nothing.

That is not a penance. Nothing here is a penance. It is the demonstration. You need to see, this week, with your own eyes, that they are the same children on a free afternoon as they were in April.

You are able to watch the thing you did not believe happen in front of you, and it has never once required a good week to prove it. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ordinary free afternoon land as evidence in a mother, and Luke 12 states plainly that a life is not assembled out of possessions.