I Am Not Well Enough This Year

You know exactly how much you have and it is not enough for the day as it stands.

You worked it out weeks ago. You are not confused about your own body; you have been living in it through whatever this year has been and you can measure it with some precision now, in hours and in what kind of hours.

And the arithmetic does not come out.

So there are two things happening at once, and only one of them is about the day.

The first is the practical problem, which is real and which has a practical answer. The second, and the one that is actually keeping you up, is that some part of you is treating the shortfall as a moral event. As though a better woman would find the hours. As though the limit is a report on your character rather than on your body.

Let me be plain about that before anything else, because it will otherwise poison every decision you make in the next three weeks.

A limit is not a failure. It is a measurement. Your body has a capacity this year, and the capacity is a fact about tissue and sleep and whatever has gone on since the spring, and it has precisely nothing to say about whether you are a good woman or a generous one or a person who loves her family.

My strength is made perfect in weakness

There is a sentence Paul reports God saying to him, and it is stronger than the way it usually gets used.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. (2 Corinthians 12:9, King James Version)

Made perfect in weakness. Not: made adequate despite it. Not: available anyway, as a concession. The weakness is named as the place where the strength completes itself, which is a much larger claim than people usually make of that verse.

And notice the context, which is a man who asked three times for a thing to be removed and was told no.

That matters here. Paul is not writing from the far side of a healing. He is writing from inside a limitation that stayed, and the verse is what he was given instead of the removal.

You are inside a limitation rather than looking back at one, and it is written into 2 Corinthians 12:9 as an answer given to a man whose thing did not go away. The written word puts the sufficiency in the middle of the condition rather than after it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on a woman doing arithmetic about her own hours.

And notice what he does with it, which is the part that is genuinely hard.

You have permission to name the infirmity out loud rather than manage around it, and Scripture has him glory in it rather than hide it. 2 Corinthians 12:9 makes the naming part of the whole business, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a woman who has been calling it something vaguer for months.

What the vagueness costs

Now let me look at the plan that has probably formed by default, because I think I know it and I think it will fail.

The plan is to do the whole thing and be tired. Not consciously. More that nothing has been taken off, and the day is coming, and doing all of it while feeling terrible is what happens by default when nothing gets decided.

And there is a second half to it, which is the silence about the reason. Less may happen, and it will be allowed to look like a choice, or like a slightly reduced year, and nobody will connect one bit of it to your body.

That vagueness is expensive and it is expensive in a specific way.

You have been keeping a real limit unnamed, and the written word has a man state his infirmity in plain terms rather than working around it quietly. 2 Corinthians 12:9 names it and keeps naming it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the shame off a plain physical fact.

Here is what happens when the reason is not given. People adjust to the visible thing, which is that less happened, and they attach a reason to it themselves. Usually the reason they attach is about willingness. She did not feel like it this year. Something is going on. She has gone off it.

And you will hear that, or feel it, and it will hurt considerably more than the truth would have, and you will have paid for the privilege by not saying it.

You were never going to be understood on a fact nobody was given, and Scripture puts the infirmity in the open where it can be seen. 2 Corinthians 12:9 has a man glory in it rather than hide it, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present when somebody says the true physical reason out loud.

One part off, and the reason named

So here is the assignment, and it has two halves and both are practical.

Take one part off the plan because of the limit, and say out loud that the limit is the reason.

One part, chosen for how much it costs your body rather than for how little anybody would mind. The heaviest one you can bear to lose. Not the smallest.

And then the naming, which is the half that gets skipped. Say it out loud to at least one person: I am taking that off because I am not well enough this year.

You are able to name a physical reason without it being a complaint, and it has never once required you to be well before you were allowed to speak. 2 Corinthians 12:9 puts a man's infirmity out in the open in his own letter, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman saying a plain sentence about her own body.

And I want to say why the naming matters more than the removal. If you take a thing off and give no reason, you have solved the practical problem and created a new one, which is a family quietly constructing an explanation. If you take it off and name the reason, there is nothing to construct.

It is also the difference between a woman who is managing and a woman who is being helped, and there may be help available that you have never been offered because nobody knew there was anything to help with.

You are giving the room a fact rather than a mystery to solve, and the written word makes the naming of a weakness part of the whole business rather than an embarrassment attached to it. 2 Corinthians 12:9 says most gladly therefore, and the Spirit of God is the one who does the completing exactly where the capacity runs out.