I Rehearse The Excuse All Week

Somebody mentioned coming over. They said it lightly, on a Sunday, in passing, and they may not even have meant it as a plan.

And you have been writing since.

Not writing it down. Writing it in your head, at traffic lights and in the shower and at four in the morning. Version one: the week is busy. Version two: the children have got something. Version three, which is better, which mentions a plumber. Version four, which you like, but which you cannot use because you used something similar in the spring and she might remember.

By Thursday you have a fully drafted excuse and a headache, and the visit has not been arranged and may never be arranged, and you have spent five days on a thing that does not exist.

That is what I want to talk about. Not the visit. The week.

Because you have paid for a visit that never happened, at full price, and nobody has ever counted it.

Sufficient unto the day

There is a line at the end of Matthew six that people quote at each other and rarely apply to something this small and this practical.

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. (Matthew 6:34, King James Version)

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

What that sentence actually says is that today has enough in it. Not that tomorrow is fine. Not that nothing bad is coming. It says today is already carrying its own weight and it does not need Thursday's added to it.

You are carrying Thursday on a Sunday, and no day in that verse has ever once been asked to hold another one's weight. Matthew 6:34 grants the difficulty in full and moves only the timing of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes four days out of a person's hands before they have started.

And notice what He does not do. He does not call the dreaded thing silly. He calls it evil, which is the strongest available word, and He is not talking anybody out of the difficulty.

He is talking about the timing of the carrying.

You are not being told that this is nothing, and Matthew 6:34 has never once dismissed the thing a person is dreading. It is written that the day has enough evil of its own, which grants the weight and moves only the timing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries a thing on the day it arrives rather than in the week before it.

You have been carrying Thursday since Sunday, and never once has anybody added up what that costs a person. The word puts each day's burden inside its own day, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a load out of a person's hands five days early.

The rehearsal costs more than the visit would

Now the arithmetic, which almost nobody in this position ever does.

If she came, it would be two hours. Two hours of feeling exposed, and then it would be over.

The rehearsal has run five days. Five days of low grade dread, poor sleep, distracted conversations and a headache. Call it eight or ten hours of real mental work spread across a week, and a week with nobody fully present in it for anything else. A house in that state is a record of what a hard stretch cost, and it is not a verdict on the woman rehearsing in it.

You have been paying full price for a visit that was never arranged, and nobody has ever once counted that against the ledger of your week. The Spirit of God is the one who notices what a rehearsal costs, and it is written that sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof and no more than that.

So the version of your life where you avoid the visit is far more expensive than the version where the visit happens.

That is not an argument for having the visit. I am not going to argue you into that and it would not work if I did. It is an argument for something much smaller, which is that the rehearsal itself is the thing worth attacking, and the way to attack it is to make the visit less frightening rather than to keep saying no better.

And the way to make a visit less frightening is a route. One walkable path from the door to a chair. That is the whole of what a visit is, physically.

You were never overreacting, and the week you spent on it has never once been proportionate to what a visit actually is. Matthew 6:34 keeps a burden inside its own day, and the Spirit of God is the one who gives a person back the four days before a thing.

You are permitted to clear a route without deciding anything about anybody, and clearing it has never once been the same as agreeing. It is written that sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in fifteen minutes of preparation that ends the rehearsing.

Clear the path to the first chair

So here is the whole of what I am asking.

Start at your front door. Walk to the first chair somebody could sit in.

Move what is on that path. Only that. Fifteen minutes, then stop.

Do not reply to the message. Do not decide about the visit. Do not draft anything.

You are ending a rehearsal tonight with a strip of floor, and it has never once required a visitor to be worth ending. Matthew 6:34 keeps each day inside its own borders, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in fifteen minutes that quiet five days.

The route is the answer to the rehearsal, because a rehearsal is a mind trying to solve a problem, and a cleared route removes most of the problem it was trying to solve.

You are able to end a week of drafting tonight, and ending it has never once required you to say yes to anything. Matthew 6:34 keeps each day's weight in its own day, and the Spirit of God is present in fifteen minutes that quiet five days.