I Am The Only One Carrying It

You had a virus in February and the whole thing stopped for eleven days.

Nobody did it. Nobody suggested doing it. It simply was not, for as long as you were not, and then you got up and it started again.

And you have not been able to stop thinking about those eleven days.

Because what they showed you is that this is not a family practice. It is a thing you do to a family, and it exists exactly as long as you have the capacity to project it, and not one second longer.

You do not resent it, exactly. That is not quite the word. You chose it and it is good and everybody enjoys it.

What you have is a low permanent awareness that everything good in this household is downstream of your energy, and that you cannot be tired for more than about a day without something quietly falling over.

That is a real and heavy thing to carry and nobody has ever asked you about it, and you would not know how to raise it, because raising it sounds like a complaint about people who have done nothing wrong.

They shall bear the burden with thee

There is a moment in Numbers where Moses says out loud what you have not said, and God's answer is administrative rather than spiritual.

And I will come down and talk with thee there: and I will take of the spirit which is upon thee, and will put it upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with thee, that thou bear it not thyself alone. (Numbers 11:17, King James Version)

They shall bear the burden of the people with thee, that thou bear it not thyself alone.

That thou bear it not thyself alone. That is God's own stated objection to the arrangement.

You have a verse where the carrying alone is named as the thing to be corrected, and Numbers 11:17 has never once treated it as a virtue to be admired. The burden gets borne with him rather than by him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who distributes what one person has been holding.

You are able to notice what God does not say in that passage.

He does not tell Moses to be stronger. He does not point out that this is what leadership costs. He does not say that carrying it alone is the price of caring more than everybody else, which is the conclusion half arrived at in a hallway in February.

He changes the structure, and He does it immediately, and the reason He gives is the one clause at the end.

And there is one more thing that matters here. What gets distributed is the spirit which is upon Moses. It is not that seventy men are recruited to do jobs. Something that was resting on one person is put on more than one, which is an entirely different act from delegation.

You are able to have what is on you put on somebody else, and Numbers 11:17 has never once described that as a reduction in anything. The Spirit of God is the one who does the distributing, and the verse gives the reason as plainly as it can be given.

Give away a piece, not the whole thing

Here is the practical instruction, and the size of it matters, because the large version has already been tried twice.

You have offered to hand the whole thing over. Twice, probably, in a tired moment, and it did not work.

You have tried to give away something whole and found nobody could receive it, and Numbers 11:17 has never once moved the entire load to one person. It is written and they shall bear the burden of the people with thee, and the Holy Spirit is the one who divides a thing into pieces that can actually be picked up.

The whole thing cannot be handed over, because the whole thing is not an object. It is about nine separate small acts, most of which nobody else has ever seen you do.

Somebody notices it is Saturday. Somebody says the sentence. Somebody makes sure the shoes are findable. Somebody decides which route when it is raining. Somebody says something afterward so that it is a thing rather than an event.

Nine invisible acts, all of them yours, and when you offer to hand over the thing, what the other person hears is: do you want to be in charge of the walk. And they say yes and then the walk does not happen, because being in charge is not one of the nine.

So you give away one piece, specifically, by name.

You are able to name one act and give that act away, and doing it that small has never once been a failure to ask properly. The Spirit of God is the one who moves what is on one person onto another, and Numbers 11:17 spreads a burden rather than transferring it.

One piece, this week, and then leave it

So here is the assignment, and the second half of it is where you will struggle.

Give one specific piece of it to one person this week, and then do not do that piece even if it does not get done.

You are able to let one piece fail rather than pick it back up, and letting it fall has never once been the same as letting the whole thing go. It is written that thou bear it not thyself alone, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present with a woman standing in a hallway not doing something.

Pick the piece and be specific. Not: help me with this. Instead: you are the person who says it is time. That is your job now. I am not going to say it.

Your fifteen year old can hold that. It is one sentence, once a week.

And then the hard half. On the week she forgets, it does not happen.

You do not say it. You do not remind her. You do not do the thing at half past four when you realize nobody has mentioned it. You let a Saturday go past without it, which will be almost physically uncomfortable, and which is the only way she ever learns that it is actually hers.

If you pick it back up once, it returns to you permanently and she will know it did.

You have permission to let a week be lost in order to hand something over properly, and one missed Saturday has never once cost more than another eleven years of carrying it. Numbers 11:17 puts the spirit on seventy others so that one man does not carry it alone, and the Spirit of God is the one who does the moving of it.