She worked it out on Sunday night and she has not thought about anything else since, and she has already decided, and the deciding took about four seconds.
The prescription. Obviously the prescription. That is not in question and never was.
Which means the heating goes on for two hours in the evening instead of the day, and she will wear the coat indoors, which she has done before and which is manageable, and she has a blanket over the chair in the front room that has been there since February and that she now calls a throw when anybody comes.
That is the whole of the plan. It took four seconds and it is entirely sensible and there is nothing wrong with any of it.
Here is what is wrong with it.
She did not tell anybody. She will not. Her daughter rings on Wednesdays and will ask how she is and she will say she is fine and it will not be a lie in any way she could be caught out on, because she is fine, she has a plan, and the plan works.
And on Thursday she will go to the pharmacy and pay, and walk home in the coat, and put the heating on at six, and none of that will have been visible to a single human being.
That is you, and it took four seconds because you have made that decision before.
Three things before anything else
The first, and it is not negotiable. Do not go without the medicine.
You have already decided that and I am agreeing with you loudly, because there are pages elsewhere in the world that would treat going without as a kind of faith, and that is not faith, and it is not on this page. Whatever is prescribed to you, take it. There is no version of trusting God in Scripture that runs through a person going without their treatment, and there never has been. Scripture put that in writing long before you read it here, in Psalm 68:19, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes written words land.
The second. Nothing on this page costs anything.
Nobody here is going to tell you that a gift releases a supply or that there is a sum you can send that changes a week. There is no toll booth in front of any of this and there never will be. Scripture nowhere puts a price on receiving from God, Isaiah 55:1, and the Holy Spirit does not work a turnstile.
The third. There is no advice here about money. You have run this week from more angles than anybody reading over your shoulder ever will.
What is here is the thing nobody else is likely to say to you, and it is not about the arithmetic at all.
The verse where God carries daily
There is a line in Psalm 68 with an unusual shape.
Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation.Psalm 68:19
Daily loadeth. Not once, and not at the end of the week when things come right. The picture is of something being carried, every day, in an ongoing way, and older renderings of that verse read it as God bearing our burdens daily, which is the same picture from the other side: either He is loading us with good or He is carrying our load, and both readings have Him doing the work every single day rather than at the end.
Which is worth sitting with in a week like this one, because you have been thinking about Thursday. One decision, one pharmacy, one figure. I have no authority to say that by myself. Scripture carries it in Psalm 68:19, and the Holy Spirit carries it to you.
He is not working to a Thursday. He has been in every one of the days.
You are carried daily and not only at the end of something. Scripture says blessed be the Lord who daily loadeth us with benefits, Psalm 68:19, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a word like daily mean this week rather than in general.
The four seconds
Now the thing that actually needs looking at, and it is not the choice.
The choice was right. You would make it again and so would anybody.
What needs looking at is that it took four seconds, because a decision that fast is not a decision. It is a reflex, and reflexes are built by repetition, which means this is not the first time and probably not the fourth.
Somewhere along the line you became the person in your own life who goes without. It happened gradually and reasonably and each individual instance was correct on the day. And by now it is so settled that a week like this one does not even present as a problem to be raised with anybody. It presents as a small logistical matter that you handle.
You are not required to be the one who absorbs it every time. Scripture says bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ, Galatians 6:2, and it does not carve out an exception for people who are managing, and the Holy Spirit has never once assigned one member of a family the permanent role of going short quietly.
Say it twice
Two halves and both are small.
The first is God, and you have not done it, because a week like this feels too domestic to raise. You will pray for your daughter and for the woman at church who is not well. You will not say this week it is the heating or the prescription out loud, because it feels like a small thing to bother Him with and because saying it makes it real in a way the plan does not. That is Scripture's sentence and not mine, Psalm 68:19, and it is the Holy Spirit and not this page who makes it true where you are.
Say it. Both figures, out loud, in your own kitchen. Not because a form of words unlocks anything, because it does not, and anybody offering you one is selling a technique instead of a Father. Say it because a specific true thing said out loud is what talking to somebody actually is.
You are welcome here with the two figures. Scripture says be careful for nothing, but in every thing by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known unto God, Philippians 4:6, and every thing is the widest word in the sentence, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets a person past the feeling that this is too small to mention.
The second is your daughter on Wednesday.
Not a request. Not the whole picture. One sentence: this week is a tight one. That is all. You do not have to explain the coat or the blanket and you certainly do not have to say the word prescription.
I know exactly why you will not want to. You have spent a long time being the one who is fine on the phone, and there is a version of love in that, and there is also a version of it that leaves the person who loves you with no way in at all. Scripture stands under that in Psalm 68:19, and the Holy Spirit does the part no sentence can do.
The week is the week. I do not know what Thursday holds and nobody who tells you they do is telling you the truth.
What can change is that you stop being the only person who knows.
You have been treating your own competence as a reason for silence: because you have a plan, and because the plan works, there is nothing to say. But competence was never the qualification for being left alone with something, and forty years of handling it quietly has produced a life in which the people who love you have to guess. It is written, in Psalm 68:19, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes what is written off a page and into a life.
And there is one more thing, and it is the one I would most want you to hear. You are not less dignified for being in a week like this. Dignity is not never needing anything. It is being fully yourself in front of God and in front of the people who love you, and that survives a plain sentence on a Wednesday phone call. It does not survive forty years of I am fine.
You are carried, daily, and you were not meant to carry the whole of it alone. Scripture says blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, Psalm 68:19, and the Holy Spirit has been in this kitchen on every one of the evenings when the heating went on at six.
So say both figures out loud tonight. Take the prescription on Thursday. Wear the coat if the coat is what this week needs.
And on Wednesday, when she asks, say four words that are true.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud with your hand on the page. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the standing to speak was given to you and no week withdraws it. Scripture carries every line here and the Holy Spirit brings them the distance. Nothing here sets God a date; He answers in His own way and the outcome is His, and however He answers, none of it is a verdict on you.
- Week where it is one or the other, you are seven days and you are not a ruling on my life. The Word of God says blessed be the Lord who daily loads us with benefits, and in the name of Jesus I bring both figures to the One who carries daily and not only at the end.
- Reflex that decided in four seconds that I would be the one to go without, get out of this kitchen. Scripture says bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ, Galatians 6:2, and the Holy Spirit has never once made managing well the qualification for being left on my own with it.
- Lord, You have been in this kitchen on every evening the heating went on at six, and You knew both figures before Sunday night. I am saying them out loud to You, and on Wednesday I am telling my daughter that this is a tight week.
Psalm 68:19
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