I Cannot Do What I Used To Do

It is your hands, and nobody knows.

Or it is your back, or it is that you cannot be on your feet for the length of time the thing takes any more, or it is that you did it two years ago and paid for it for a week and told nobody about the week.

Whatever the specific is, the fact is the same: your body will not do the thing, and you have decided not to say so.

And so you have been doing less, for two or three years now, and letting it look like whatever people decide it looks like.

Let me be plain about what they have decided, because you may not have followed it through.

They have not concluded that you are getting older. That would require them to think about it, and people do not think about the people they see every year; they notice a difference and reach for the nearest explanation.

The nearest explanation, when a man quietly stops doing things, is that he has gone off it. That he cannot be bothered any more. That something has changed about how he feels about the whole business, and by extension about them.

That is what a silence produces, and it is much worse than the truth.

Teach us to number our days

There is a prayer in the psalms about counting, and the reason given for the counting is not the one people expect.

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. (Psalm 90:12, King James Version)

Number our days. It is arithmetic about a finite quantity, and the psalm asks God to teach it, which means it is a skill rather than a mood.

And look at the reason. That we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Not so that we may be sad about it. Not so that we may be reminded of our own end. The purpose of counting is practical: knowing the quantity lets a man spend it well.

That is a completely different activity from what you have been doing, which is knowing the quantity privately and letting everybody else work from the wrong number.

You are permitted to number what you actually have, and it is written into Psalm 90:12 that the counting is for the applying rather than for the grieving. The written word makes it a skill to be taught, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the dread out of an honest measurement.

And notice the word us.

You were never meant to do the numbering alone, and Psalm 90:12 is a prayer in the plural rather than a private calculation. Scripture puts the counting in company, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a man who has been doing his arithmetic on his own for three years.

What the hiding is protecting

Now let me look at what the silence is actually for, because I think you know and have not said it.

It is not vanity. Looking weak in front of the family is not the main thing at stake.

It is that saying it out loud starts something. Once they know your hands will not do it, the subject exists. And then there are conversations about what you should and should not be doing, and somebody starts watching you carry things, and somebody else uses a voice with you that they have never used before.

You have seen that happen to other men. That is what you are protecting yourself from, and it is a real thing to want to avoid, and I am not going to pretend it is imaginary.

You have been protecting yourself from a real thing and paying for it with a worse one, and Scripture treats the numbering of days as wisdom rather than as surrender. Psalm 90:12 asks for the counting outright, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates an honest fact from the beginning of being managed.

And here is the arithmetic. On one side: some awkwardness, and possibly one person who overcorrects for a while and then settles down. On the other: two or three years, already spent, of your family believing you have lost interest in them.

That trade has been running in the wrong direction and it has been running quietly.

You have been paying a great deal for a silence, and the written word makes knowing the true quantity the beginning of applying a heart to wisdom. Psalm 90:12 puts the counting first and the wisdom after it, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present when a man decides to say the real reason once.

One sentence, one person

So here is the assignment, and the size of it is the protection.

Tell one person the real reason, and give no more of it than one sentence.

One person. One sentence. Something like: I am not doing that any more because my hands will not do it.

Nothing after it. No detail about which fingers or what the doctor said or how long it has been. No plan, no forecast, and above all nothing about what you can and cannot manage in general, because that opens exactly the conversation you have been avoiding.

You are able to give a fact without opening a subject, and it has never once required you to hand over anything else about your health. Psalm 90:12 asks for the counting as an act of wisdom, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man saying twelve words and then stopping.

And the stopping is the whole technique. A single fact, stated once and closed, is almost impossible to build a conversation on. People say oh right, and they file it, and they stop constructing a story about your interest levels.

An explanation, on the other hand, is a doorway, and somebody will walk through it, and then you will be inside the conversation you dreaded.

You are giving one fact and closing the door behind it, and Scripture never once asks a man to hand over his whole condition to be assessed. Psalm 90:12 asks God for the teaching rather than the family for a verdict, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a man through the four seconds after a plain sentence.