There Was Nobody To Hand It To

At about one in the afternoon it stopped working, and there was nobody to give any of it to.

That is the difference between your day and everybody else's account of a day that went wrong. Other people hand things over. One of them takes the crying one and the other one deals with the situation. Somebody goes and gets the car while somebody else stands with the bags.

You did all of it, consecutively, for five hours, and there was no point in the afternoon where you were not the person responsible.

And you got through it. That is what makes this hard to talk about, because from the outside it looks like a day that was fine. You got them home, you got them fed, everybody slept.

But you have been tired in a specific way since, and it is not the ordinary tiredness. It is the tiredness of having been the only load bearing wall for five hours, and there is no word for that, and nobody has asked.

So let me talk about it. And let me be careful about one thing at the front: I am not going to tell you that you were not alone. You were the only adult there. That is a fact about the afternoon and I am not going to spiritualize it away.

What I am going to say is more specific and it comes out of Deuteronomy, and it is about what was underneath you rather than beside you.

Underneath are the everlasting arms

There is a line at the end of Deuteronomy, in a blessing spoken over a whole people, and the preposition in it is the entire article.

The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. (Deuteronomy 33:27, King James Version)

You have a promise in the written word about what is underneath rather than what is beside, and no hour of that afternoon has ever once been held up by you alone. Deuteronomy 33:27 puts the arms underneath rather than alongside, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that specific to a woman who genuinely was the only adult there.

Underneath. Not beside. That is not a small difference and it is not a poetic flourish.

Beside would mean somebody else taking a share of the weight, which is exactly what you did not have and what I am not going to pretend you had. Underneath means the floor. It means the thing that holds up the person who is holding everything else.

You were held up while you were holding, and no part of that afternoon has once been you standing on nothing. It is written that underneath are the everlasting arms, which is a statement about what is below rather than about who is next to you, and the Spirit of God is what makes the floor of a hard day something a woman can name.

And notice the first half. The eternal God is thy refuge. A refuge is somewhere to be, not somebody to hand things to.

So the verse offers two things and neither of them is a second adult. It offers a place and a floor. Which is, if you look at it honestly, what actually got you through five hours, because something did.

You are able to name what held you without pretending anybody helped, and no part of that has ever once made the afternoon easier than it was. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a woman an accurate account rather than a comforting one, and Deuteronomy 33 offers a refuge and a floor rather than assistance.

Getting through it is not the same as putting it down

Now the practical part, and it is about what happens after a day like that.

Because you did get through it. And getting through a thing has a specific danger in it, which is that nobody, including you, ever registers that it happened.

A day that ends with everybody home and fed produces no record. There is nothing to point at. And so the five hours go into you rather than into any account of the week, and stay there.

You are able to have got through something and still say it was heavy, and getting through it has never once meant it cost nothing. The Spirit of God is what lets a woman hold both the competence and the cost, and it is written that the arms are underneath, which implies weight rather than ease.

And here is why the telling matters, and it is not about being appreciated. An unspoken load does not get put down. It gets stored. And stored load is what makes a woman flinch, four months later, at the suggestion of another day out, for reasons she cannot explain to anybody including herself.

That is the actual risk here. Not that nobody thanked you. That the next invitation gets refused by a body that remembers something nobody ever named.

You are able to name it now so it does not decide something in four months, and saying it has never once been the same thing as complaining. It is written that the everlasting arms are underneath, holding up somebody who is carrying, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets a stored thing said out loud before it hardens.

And there is one more thing, which is about your children. They were there. They know something happened and they know their mother did all of it.

They do not need to be told it was hard. What helps them is much smaller: seeing that a person can carry a difficult afternoon and then say so afterward, in an ordinary voice, without it being a catastrophe.

You are able to show them what carrying something looks like from both ends, and doing it has never once put any of that weight onto them. The Spirit of God is with a mother who says a true thing at an ordinary volume, and Deuteronomy 33:27 names the arms underneath in the middle of a blessing rather than in a lament.

Tell one person, and let them not fix it

So here is the assignment, and the second half of it is the part that makes it work.

Tell one person what you held on your own that day. And let them not fix it.

The telling first, and be concrete rather than general. Not it was a hard day. Say: at about one it stopped working, and I was the only adult there, and I did the whole of it for five hours, and I have been tired in a strange way since.

You are able to give somebody the specifics rather than a summary, and the detail has never once been you asking for sympathy. Deuteronomy 33:27 says exactly where the arms are rather than gesturing at comfort, and the Spirit of God is with a woman being specific on a park bench.

Now the second half. Let them not fix it.

Because whoever you tell will want to do something, and the something will probably be advice, or an offer that will not happen, or a sentence about how they do not know how you manage. And your reflex, when that arrives, will be to reassure them and close the subject.

Do not close it. Let it be slightly unresolved. Say yes, it was, and then let there be a pause.

You are able to leave a thing said and unresolved, and letting the pause happen has never once been you making somebody uncomfortable for no reason. It is written that the arms are underneath rather than that the problem is removed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a conversation that does not conclude.

Because the point of telling was never to get it solved. It was to get it out of storage. And a thing that has been said out loud once, to one person, is out.