The Year The Baby Came

I want to ask you a question that nobody asked at the time.

What year did the house go?

And I would like you to notice how fast the answer came, and how long it has been sitting there without ever being said out loud in a sentence with the word because in it.

It was the year of the baby. Or the second one. Or the year of the baby and the move and the job all at once, because it usually is.

Here is what happened in that year, plainly. You stopped sleeping in whole pieces. Your entire capacity for making decisions went to a person who could not make any. Every hour that used to hold a small maintenance task now held feeding, or settling, or carrying, or standing in a hallway at three in the morning.

And the house went. Naturally the house went. There was nobody left in that year to hold it. A house is a record of what a year cost, and it is not a verdict on the woman who lived through it.

But nobody ever wrote it down as a cost. It went down as a joy, and it was a joy, and joys are not permitted to have invoices. So the house going got filed under something else entirely, which was you.

He shall gather the lambs with his arm

There is a picture in Isaiah that I have never once been able to read quickly.

He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young. (Isaiah 40:11, King James Version)

Read the last clause on its own.

Shall gently lead those that are with young.

That is a separate provision for a separate condition. The lambs get carried, and that is the part everybody quotes. But there is a second group in that verse, and they are not the lambs. They are the ones with young. The ones doing the carrying.

You are named in that verse as one of the ones who is carrying, and the pace you kept has never once been measured against the flock. The Spirit of God is the one who applies a provision that has been sitting unclaimed for years, and Isaiah 40:11 slows the whole company for the ones with young.

And what they get is not a rebuke for moving slowly. What they get is a pace adjustment from the shepherd Himself. He goes slower for them, on purpose, because they cannot go at the speed of the flock and He knows it.

Somebody wrote that into the prophets. The pace of a mother is a thing God accounts for by name.

You are not being moved along at the pace of people who were not carrying what you were carrying, and Isaiah 40:11 has never once expected that of anybody with young. It is written that He gently leads those that are with young, which is a change in the pace and not a criticism of the walker, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that adjustment real in a house at three in the morning.

You have been comparing yourself to a flock that God Himself does not compare you to. The word makes a separate provision for exactly the condition you were in, and the Spirit of God is the one who applies a provision that has been sitting there unclaimed for years.

The house was the thing that could wait

Now I want to say something about that year that I think will land oddly and then land properly.

You made a good decision.

Not a decision you would recognize as one, because it was not made at a table. But every night in that year something in you triaged what was left of you, and it gave that to the baby, and the house got what was left, which was nothing.

That is the correct order. If you had held the house together and given the baby the remainder, we would be having a different conversation and it would be a much worse one.

The house was the only thing in that year that could wait. So it waited. And it is still waiting, and it has been waiting so long that the waiting has started to look like a verdict on you rather than the outcome of the right choice made two hundred nights in a row.

You were never letting the house go, and what you were doing was spending everything you had on the one thing in that year that could not wait. Isaiah 40:11 gives the ones with young a gentler pace by design, and the Spirit of God is the one who names a cost as a cost rather than as a failing.

So tonight is not cleaning. Tonight is accounting.

You are permitted to write down what that year actually took, and writing it down has never once been the same as making an excuse. It is written that He gathers the lambs and gently leads the ones carrying them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an honest accounting feel like relief instead of self pity.

Write down the month

So here is what I am asking, and it takes a piece of paper.

Write down the month the house started to go. Not the year. The month, if you can find it. March. September. The one where something shifted.

Then, underneath, write what was happening in your life that month. Not what you did wrong. What was happening. A newborn. No sleep. Nobody helping. A move. A hospital. Whatever it was.

Then look at the two lines together.

That is the whole task. You do not clean anything tonight.

You are able to see those two lines beside each other tonight, and seeing them has never once required you to have recovered first. Isaiah 40:11 accounts for the ones with young explicitly and by name, and the Spirit of God is present in a piece of paper on a kitchen counter at nine in the evening.