Yvette gets in at nineteen minutes past eight and there are four flights and no lift and there has not been a lift since March.
Twelve hours. She is on the domiciliary rounds, which means eleven houses, which means eleven front doors and eleven kettles and eleven people who mostly want somebody to stay a bit longer than the schedule allows.
She loves the job. That is important, because people assume you cannot love a job like that and she does.
She gets to the second landing and her legs go the way legs do and she stands there for a second, and it is on that landing that she noticed the thing this article is about.
Her friend Charmaine had messaged. Three messages. She had seen the notifications on the bus and had not opened them.
And standing on that second landing, Yvette caught herself thinking: I will do those tomorrow.
Which is not remarkable. Except that as she thought it, she also felt something small and heavy attach itself, and she realized, with a clarity she did not enjoy, that she had just filed a friend under things to get through.
She stood there long enough for the timer light to go off.
She said afterwards that she went up the other two flights doing an inventory, and that it was one of the worst five minutes of her year, because what she found was that everything arriving in her life had been getting the same treatment. Her friend. Her sister's baby. The trip in September. A neighbor's kindness with a parcel. All of it was landing in the same place and being labeled with the same word, which was more.
She got in and did not put the light on and stood in the kitchen and said, out loud, to nobody: "Even the good ones."
Her neighbor Pearl let herself in about ten minutes later because Pearl has a key and had already started cooking in her own flat and had decided to bring it round.
You may be doing the same filing. When there is not enough of you, everything that arrives starts to read as weight, and the cruel part is that this happens to the good things as well as the hard ones. And nobody has ever put a different word on your table.
Loaded Is Not The Same Word As Charged
There is a line in a long psalm that uses a word people usually associate with burden, and uses it the other way round.
"Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation."Psalm 68:19
Who daily loads us with benefits.
Loads. That is a weight word. The psalm knows exactly what it is doing. It takes the vocabulary of something being piled onto a person and attaches it to benefits, which is the vocabulary of something being given.
And the two things together make the distinction this article exists for. There is a difference between being loaded and being charged, and a tired person loses the ability to tell them apart.
You have been carrying good things in the same arms as the bill. Psalm 68 puts the loading and the benefits in one phrase, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that and stands it on a second landing under a timer light that has just gone off.
And notice the word daily. Not occasionally. Not when things are going well. The psalm describes an ordinary, unremarkable, every day arrival of good, which is exactly the kind that stops being visible to somebody who is running on empty.
You were being loaded rather than invoiced, on every single one of those days. That is what the written word says about how the good arrives, and it is the Spirit of God who makes the difference between those two words land in the arms of somebody on a staircase.
Nothing Here Is Another Thing To Do
Now the part that has to be said with real care, because this is the exact article that can do damage.
A person in Yvette's position does not need to be told to be more grateful. That is one more item, filed in the same place, labeled with the same word.
So let this be plain: nothing on this page is a task. There is no gratitude practice here. There is no journal. There is no evening routine and there is nothing to keep up, and if you finish this and do absolutely nothing differently, nothing is lost.
What is on offer is a single word swap, and word swaps cost nothing and take no time.
The messages from Charmaine are a load and not a charge. The trip in September is a load and not a charge. Pearl letting herself in with food is a load and not a charge. Same weight. Completely different thing to be carrying.
You are not behind on anything, and the good arriving is not another demand. It is written that every good gift comes down from the Father of lights, which means the direction of travel is toward you and not away, and His Spirit is the one who has been coming up those stairs beside you for the whole of the year without a lift.
And here is the guard said flat, as this site says everything. Nothing is asked of you here. No amount, no proportion, no practice, no schedule, and nothing routed to any person, cause or work at all, this one included. You are as fully His standing in a dark kitchen at twenty past eight, that is the written shape of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one keeping this off the ground where new obligations grow.
Something can shift here, one word, and it costs you nothing at all.
You have been loaded with good rather than charged for it. Scripture uses the weight word on purpose and attaches it to benefits, and the Holy Spirit is the one making that read as arms full rather than as a clever point about a psalm.
Two things this is not. It is not the start of a scheme, and there is nothing further down that turns this into a practice. And it is not a promise about the lift being fixed, because there are still four flights and eleven houses tomorrow, and what God does in your circumstances is genuinely His to decide.
You are carrying benefits, and the word on them was never the word you have been reading. That is written, and His Spirit has come up those stairs beside you every night of it.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, sitting down, shoes off if you can manage it. The standing to speak to God like this is yours in Christ and does not go down when you are tired, Scripture is the ground under it, and the Holy Spirit has come up those stairs beside you every night. What He does next in your circumstances is His to decide, and none of these lines is a lever.
- Stairs I come up at the end of every shift, you were never a bill arriving. The word of God says blessed be the Lord who daily loads us with benefits, and it picks the weight word on purpose and attaches it to good. I am carrying benefits and I am calling them by their right name.
- Word more that I have been putting on everything that arrives, get off this landing, because a friend's message was never another thing to get through. In the name of Jesus I put you down by the timer light, since what is written says every good gift comes down from the Father of lights and travels toward me. His Spirit has come up these four flights beside me all year.
- Father, You have been on these stairs at nineteen minutes past eight every single night. Your word says You daily load us with benefits, even the God of our salvation, and Your Spirit is the one who made me stand still long enough on a landing to notice what I was doing. You load me with good, and I am glad to say so out loud.
Psalm 68:19
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