They Would Only Do It Wrong

The sentence is: they would only do it wrong. And you have never said it out loud, and it is completely true, and it is the reason you have not had a day off in five years.

Let me be honest about the true part first, because most articles about this pretend otherwise.

They would do it wrong. If somebody else packed that bag, three things would be missing and two would be the wrong ones. If somebody else worked out the timings, you would leave forty minutes late. This is not you being controlling. You have tested it, several times, and the results are in.

So the reasoning is sound and the conclusion is that you do everything, forever, on every trip, until the children leave home.

And I think you have started to notice the size of that conclusion, which is why you are reading this.

What I want to offer is not a better system for getting other people to do things properly. It is a piece of arithmetic that you have not run, and it is in Exodus, and it is about what things actually cost.

They shall bear the burden with thee

There is a passage in Exodus where a man is told to hand work over, and there is a phrase in it that answers the objection that has stood in this house for five years.

And let them judge the people at all seasons: and it shall be, that every great matter they shall bring unto thee, but every small matter they shall judge: so shall it be easier for thyself, and they shall bear the burden with thee. (Exodus 18:22, King James Version)

You have an instruction in the written word to hand over the small matters, and no likelihood of them being done badly has ever once been raised as an objection to it. Exodus 18:22 divides the great matters from the small ones and gives the small ones away, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that division available to a woman standing in a kitchen doorway.

Look at what is being handed over. The small matters. Not the important ones. He keeps those.

That is the whole design and it is remarkably practical. Nobody in that chapter suggests the new judges would be as good as Moses. Almost certainly they were worse. That is not the point being optimized for.

You are able to hand over the small matters and keep the great ones, and doing it in that order has never once been you giving up control of anything that mattered. It is written that every great matter comes to him and every small matter is judged by them, which is a sorting rather than a surrender, and the Spirit of God is what shows a woman which half is actually hers.

And here is the phrase that does the work. So shall it be easier for thyself, and they shall bear the burden with thee.

Easier for thyself. That is given as a reason, out loud, in Scripture, as though the wellbeing of the person carrying it were a legitimate consideration.

You are able to count the cost to yourself as a legitimate reason, and no year of this has ever once made your own tiredness an illegitimate thing to weigh. The Holy Spirit is the one who tells a woman that her own capacity is in the text, and Exodus 18 gives easier for thyself as the stated purpose of the whole arrangement.

The arithmetic you have not run

Now the practical part, and it is a comparison nobody here has made, because only one side of it has ever been visible.

The comparison that gets run is between two things: the cooler packed correctly, and the cooler packed badly. And on that comparison, the answer is right every time. Correct beats badly, always.

But that is not the actual comparison. The real one is: a cooler packed badly, against a woman who has not put anything down in five years.

You are able to weigh the cost of carrying it against the cost of it being done badly, and only one of those has ever once been counted in this house. The Spirit of God is what makes a hidden cost visible, and it is written that the purpose of the handing over was that it should be easier for the man carrying it.

And that is where the arithmetic goes wrong, because the badly packed cooler is visible and immediate and everybody sees it, and your exhaustion is invisible, slow, and has been absorbed for years.

Of course the visible thing wins. It always does. That is not a failure of reasoning on your part, it is a failure of the evidence being equally available.

So let me put the other number on the table. Five years of not putting anything down produces a particular kind of tiredness in a woman, and your family does not have a way to see it, and neither, quite, do you.

You are able to see the cost of five years, and it has never once been a smaller number than a badly packed bag. It is written so shall it be easier for thyself, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman put her own exhaustion into the calculation without feeling selfish about it.

And here is one more thing, which is about them. A person who has never been allowed to do a thing badly never learns to do it well. Nobody learns any other way. Which means five years of you doing it correctly has produced a household in which nobody else can do it at all, and that is now a fact you are also carrying.

One part, handed over, and left alone

So here is the assignment, and the second half of it is the whole of it.

Hand one specific part of the next trip to one person. And do not check it or improve it.

Choose the part first, and choose it by one rule: pick something where being done badly is survivable. Not the medicines. Not the documents. The food, or the entertainment, or what happens between two and four in the afternoon.

You are able to choose the small matter and keep the great one, and doing it that way has never once been you being less careful with this family. Exodus 18:22 sorts the matters explicitly rather than handing over everything, and the Spirit of God is with a woman deciding which one thing to release.

Then hand it over in one sentence, plainly: you are doing the food, all of it, and I am not going to look at it.

And then the hard part, which is the entire exercise. Do not check it. Do not glance in the bag. Do not ask a question that is a check disguised as interest, such as have you thought about drinks, which everybody in your family can identify instantly for what it is.

You are able to leave something entirely alone, and leaving it has never once been the same thing as not caring how the day goes. The Holy Spirit is the one who holds a woman's hand off a bag, and it is written that the small matters were judged by others rather than reviewed by Moses afterward.

It will be done badly. Genuinely badly, possibly worse than you imagine. Something will be missing. Somebody will be thirsty.

And the day will be fine, and you will have put one thing down for the first time in five years, and that is what those minutes were actually for.