Ten Years Of Saturday Nights

Six o'clock on a Saturday evening and it arrives, the way it has arrived on Saturday evenings for about eight years, somewhere between putting the dishes on and sitting down.

Nothing has happened. The house is fine. Tomorrow is a normal Sunday.

And there it is. That specific weight in the chest that she has never once described to anybody, including the man sitting nine feet away who has been married to her for twenty-two years and would want to know.

Ten years she has run the children's program.

Ten years of doing the thing well. The kids adore her, which is not an exaggeration, and two of them who are now twenty-three still text her at Christmas. The parents trust her without thinking about it, which is the highest compliment a parent gives. She has trained six volunteers and three of them are better than she was at the start.

She is not burnt out in the way people mean it. She sleeps. She is not resentful. On a Sunday morning she is fully there and the room works and she enjoys about seventy percent of it, which is a good percentage for anything.

It is the Saturday at six that she cannot account for.

And she has tried to say it, twice, in her head, and both times the sentence came back at her in her own voice sounding like this: you get to spend Sunday mornings with children who love you and you are complaining. So she has said nothing, for eight years, and the not saying has become its own quiet piece of furniture in the house.

Before we go any further

I want to be clear about what this is not, because you will read it braced otherwise.

Nothing on this page is going to tell you to step down, hand it over, ask for a break, or say anything to anybody. Not this evening and not by suggestion at the end. I cannot see your church, your volunteers, or what would happen in that hall next month, and a page that cannot see those things has no business pointing you anywhere.

And nothing here is going to tell you what you should be doing instead. There is no list at the bottom and no assessment coming.

You are not being steered, and there is nothing you have to decide tonight. That is not me being cautious with you. Scripture is what makes room for the sentence before any decision, and the Holy Spirit has never once required a woman to have a plan before He would meet her.

Moses is allowed to say it

There is a passage in Numbers that is not read much, and it is the most useful thing in the Bible for a Saturday at six.

Moses is leading a people God gave him to lead. The work is legitimate. He is the right man. And he says this, out loud, to God.

I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me.Numbers 11:14

Now watch what God does not do.

He does not rebuke him. He does not say think of the privilege. He does not remind Moses of the burning bush or the Red Sea or how many people would give anything to be in his position. He does not correct the theology of the complaint and He does not question whether Moses loves the people.

He answers it. Practically. Seventy others get the weight put on them.

You are allowed to say a good thing is too heavy for you, out loud, to God, and there is nothing in that sentence that offends Him. I am not stretching the passage. Numbers 11:14 is the sentence and Numbers 11:16 is God answering it without a word of reproach, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a written scene like that and hands a woman permission she had assumed was not available.

The weight is not a verdict on your love

Here is the thing that has kept you silent for eight years, and it is worth saying flatly.

You have been reading the Saturday heaviness as evidence about your heart. As though a woman who really loved those children would not feel it, and therefore feeling it means something has gone wrong in her, and therefore saying it out loud would be confessing something rather than describing something.

That is not what weight is.

Moses loved that people. He argued with God for them repeatedly, at cost. The weight and the love are in the same man in the same chapter and neither one is the measure of the other.

You can love those kids entirely, be the right person for them in every observable way, be genuinely glad on a Sunday, and still be carrying something on a Saturday that is not sustainable and not sinful and not a comment on your affection.

You have not been failing to love them for eight years, you have been carrying a weight and grading yourself on it. The word puts the heaviness and the love in the same mouth without embarrassment, and the Spirit who searches all things has been in that kitchen at six every Saturday and has never once read it as ingratitude.

What has actually been costing you

And now the part underneath, which is bigger than the program.

For eight years there has been a real and recurring thing in your week that has not been said to God. Not because you were rebellious. Because the only phrasing you could find made you sound like a woman who did not deserve what she had, and nobody brings God a sentence they are ashamed of.

So the heaviness has been carried without being handed over. That is a different arrangement from carrying something with Him and it costs about three times as much.

He has known since the second year. Nothing you say tonight is news. What has been missing is not His awareness of it.

You are welcome to hand Him a sentence you are ashamed of, and He has never once asked you to pretend a Saturday is fine when it is not. Scripture is full of people saying flat, unresolved, unflattering things to God out loud, and the Spirit who was given to help us is not waiting for a better draft.