I Would Rather Pay Than Ask My Family

The man comes, and it takes him nine minutes, and you pay him.

He is polite. He calls you sir. He does the thing and explains a little of it if you ask, and he does not sigh, and he does not look at the ceiling, and he does not say the word again in that particular voice.

That is what the money is for. It is not for the nine minutes.

You worked it out yourself a while back, though you have never said it to anybody. You are not buying repair. You are buying the absence of a sigh.

And on the face of it, that is a good trade. It is a small amount of money and it buys you a whole afternoon without feeling small in your own house. Plenty of people would call that money well spent, and I am not going to stand here and tell you it was foolish.

But something has been bothering you, and I think I know what it is.

Your daughter does not know she has been replaced. She thinks you manage on your own. She has no idea a stranger comes.

And there is a distance opening up in that house that neither of you has noticed, because it is being paid for.

God setteth the solitary in families

There is a short line about what God does with people who are on their own, and the verb is the surprising part.

God setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which are bound with chains. (Psalm 68:6, King James Version)

Setteth. Places. Puts on purpose.

Being in a family is described there as something God does deliberately with a person who was alone, and it is put in the same breath as bringing prisoners out.

You are set in a family by a deliberate act, and no man has ever once been placed somewhere by God by accident. Psalm 68:6 says God setteth the solitary in families, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that solid for a man who has been managing on his own since his wife died.

Notice the word solitary. The verse takes it as given that a person can be genuinely alone, and it does not scold them for it. There is no suggestion that being solitary is a failing.

It is a condition, and the answer to it is not a lecture. It is a placing.

You have been placed rather than instructed, and no man who found himself alone has ever once been handed a scolding by heaven for it. The Holy Spirit is the one who acts rather than advises when a person is on their own, and it is written that the setting in families is God's own doing.

And the second half is worth having, because it is about chains rather than about loneliness, and the two are put together for a reason.

Some arrangements a lonely man makes to protect himself become the chain. They begin as sense and end as a wall, and the man who built it is the last to see it.

You were never meant to be held in place by your own arrangements, and a sensible habit has never once had the right to become a wall. The Spirit of God is the one who brings people out of what has bound them, and Scripture sets that promise beside the placing in families in a single verse.

What the arrangement is buying

Now let me be concrete, because a general reassurance will not stop you phoning the man.

Look honestly at both sides of the trade. On one side, dignity, an afternoon without feeling small, and a transaction that ends cleanly with nobody owing anybody anything.

Those are real goods and they should not be dismissed. There is nothing shameful about paying somebody to do a job.

You are buying something genuinely valuable, and protecting your own dignity has never once been the wrong instinct for anybody. The Spirit of God is the one who honors what a man is guarding rather than mocking it, and Psalm 68:6 puts the answer to being alone in a placing rather than a rebuke.

Now the other side, which nobody has ever put in front of you.

Every time the man comes, your daughter loses a small chance to be useful to her father. She does not know she has lost it, and so she cannot mind, and so nothing is ever said, and the loss is invisible from both sides.

Multiply that by three years. That is a great many small occasions that never happened, and a father and a daughter who are further apart than either of them can account for.

You have been paying for something that was quietly costing something else, and no clean transaction has ever once been as free as it looked. The written word sets a man in a family on purpose, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person the other column of a ledger they have only ever read one side of.

Ask one of your own

Now the small thing, and it is deliberately small.

I am not going to suggest you stop paying the man. He is good at his job and there are jobs worth paying for, and this is not an argument about money.

Ask one of your own children one small thing this week. One that you could easily have paid somebody for.

You are able to ask your own daughter one small thing, and one question has never once been a burden on somebody who loves you. Psalm 68:6 has God placing the solitary in families on purpose, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a father asks his child for something for the first time in three years.

And choose a small one deliberately. Not the hardest thing. Not the thing you most need. The one that would take four minutes and does not matter much.

Because the point of it is not the job. The point is to give her the four minutes, which is a thing she has not been offered in three years and does not know she is missing.

You are handing somebody an occasion and not a chore, and four minutes of being useful to a father have never once been a cost to a daughter. The Spirit of God is the one who reopens what a household has quietly settled, and it is written that God brings people out of what has bound them.