I Save It All Up For When They Visit

There is a list, and it lives on the refrigerator.

It has been added to at odd hours. Some of it is in pencil. There is one line on it you can no longer read and you have never quite thrown it away in case it turns out to matter.

Nine things. It has been nine things for a while, because two come off every visit and two more go on in the weeks between.

And that arithmetic is the whole trouble, though it took you a long time to see it that way.

Here is what happens on the day. They arrive, and there is lunch and the children and the news and the drive back, and about forty minutes in, somebody says, was there anything you needed a hand with.

And you say, oh, just one or two things.

You do not bring the list to the table. You would never bring the list to the table. You bring two of it, quietly, and the other seven stay on the refrigerator door.

And afterward you look at the seven and something in you goes down a little, because a list that never empties starts to look like a report card after a while.

I want to talk about who that list is for, because I do not think it is for them.

Pour out your heart before him

There is a line about how much a person is allowed to bring at once, and the verb in it is a generous one.

Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us. (Psalm 62:8, King James Version)

Pour out. Not present neatly. Not select the two most reasonable items. Pour.

That is the word you use for emptying a jug, and it does not describe a careful portioning of anything.

You are invited to empty the whole jug at once, and heaven has never once asked anybody to bring two of nine. Psalm 62:8 says pour out your heart before him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that permission real for a woman who has been rationing herself at her own kitchen table.

Notice who it is addressed to. Ye people. Not the specially close. Not those who have earned an audience. People, generally, all of them, at all times.

That is about as wide as an invitation gets.

You have an invitation with no shortlist attached to it, and nobody has ever once had to qualify for the word people. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a general invitation feel personal, and it is written that the pouring out is offered to everybody at all times.

And there is the last phrase, God is a refuge for us, which is the reason the pouring is safe. A refuge is somewhere you go when you have too much, not somewhere you go when you have tidied up.

Nobody arrives at a refuge presentable.

You were never required to be tidy before you were welcome, and no refuge on earth has ever once been for people who had already sorted themselves out. The Spirit of God is the one who receives what has not been arranged, and Scripture puts the refuge at the end of the verse as the reason the pouring is allowed.

Who the list is really for

Now let me be concrete, because a general reassurance will not shorten a list.

Think about why only two come off. Not because they refuse. They have never refused. They have never once said, that is enough now.

Two come off because you decided, before they arrived, how much a visit could reasonably be asked to carry.

That decision was made privately, by you, with no input from anybody, and it has been governing every visit for two years.

You are working to a limit that you set yourself, and a private ration has never once been the same thing as somebody else's refusal. The Spirit of God is the one who shows a person which fence they built themselves, and Psalm 62:8 uses the word pour where a person has been using the word portion.

And here is the second half, which is about the list rather than about them. A list that never empties is not a list. It is a scoreboard.

It began as a helpful thing, a way of not forgetting. Somewhere in the last year it became a running total of what a woman has not managed, and it sits on a door at eye level, and she reads it every time she gets the milk out.

You have been walking past a scoreboard forty times a week, and no piece of paper on a door has ever once been a report on the woman who wrote it. The written word says pour out rather than portion out, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a scoreboard down off a door.

Two of them, between visits

Now the small thing, and it does not involve waiting for anybody.

I am not going to suggest you hand somebody the whole list. That would be a large gesture, and large gestures are not what this needs, and it would make the next visit into an occasion.

Ask two of them this week, by message, without waiting for anybody to come.

You are able to ask two small things in a week without waiting for a Sunday, and one message has never once been an intrusion on somebody who loves you. Psalm 62:8 says pour out your heart before him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a woman stops saving things up.

The reason for spreading it out is simple and it is not about their patience. Two questions on a Tuesday and two more on a Friday are four things that leave the door, and none of them arrives as a list.

And the visit stays a visit rather than becoming an appointment.

You are taking things off a door rather than adding to a Sunday, and four small questions across a week have never once been a burden anybody noticed carrying. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a woman use the days between, and it is written that the trusting is at all times rather than at scheduled ones.