The One in the Hallway

As on every article here: this is not medicine and nothing on this page is treatment. If anybody in your house needs care, that comes from somebody qualified, and it comes today.

This article is not for the person in the bed. It is for you, in the hallway, holding two mugs.

There is a whole household of attention pointed at somebody else, and you are the one arranging it. You know the medication times, the appointment dates, the name of the receptionist, which of the neighbors can be asked and which cannot. You are the reason the whole thing works.

And nobody has asked how you are in about four months.

Not out of cruelty. You have made yourself very easy to not ask. You answer briskly. You change the subject onto the patient. You have become so good at the role that people have stopped seeing a person in it, and the worst part is that you trained them to do that and you would do it again tomorrow.

Who carries the one who carries

There is a verse in Isaiah about a shepherd, and everybody quotes the first half of it. I want the second half.

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)

Two different kinds of care in one sentence.

The lambs get carried. They are small and they cannot manage, so they are picked up and held against Him, and that is the picture everybody knows and it is beautiful.

But then there is the second group, and the second group is not carried. Those that are with young. The ones who are themselves carrying something. And the word for them is not carried, it is gently led, which is exactly right, because a person who is carrying something cannot be picked up. They have to keep walking. What they need is somebody who slows down to their pace and stays beside them. That is the whole shepherd, and it is the half of the verse nobody reads to a carer.

You are gently led rather than left, and God has never once had only one way of caring for people. Isaiah 40:11 puts the ones who are with young in the same sentence as the carried lambs and gives them their own kind of tending, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as being seen rather than as being given less.

The trap in being told you are amazing

I want to name something that is done to carers constantly, always kindly, and which functions like a lock.

People say you are amazing. They say they do not know how you do it. They say the person you are looking after is lucky to have you. Every word of that is meant well. Isaiah 40:11 never once admires anybody's stamina, and the Holy Spirit is not impressed by endurance the way a street is. And what it does, over months, is make coping into your identity in that house, and an identity is a very hard thing to put down. Because now stopping is not just tiring, it is out of character. If you say you cannot do this week, you are contradicting the thing everybody has agreed you are.

So the praise, which was genuine, quietly becomes the reason you will not ask for anything. And nobody meant that, and it happened anyway.

You are not obliged to be who they have described, and God has never once needed you to be extraordinary. The written word says he shall gently lead those that are with young, which is God adjusting His pace to a person rather than admiring their stamina, and the Spirit of God is the one who unlocks a role that kindness turned into a cage.

Asking is the hard part and it is the assignment

So here is the actual work, and it is not resting. I know better than to tell you to rest.

It is asking for one specific thing.

Not help in general. Nobody can act on that, which is why every offer of anything I can do dies in the air. One specific thing, of one specific person, on a named day. Can you sit here Thursday between two and four. Can you do the Tuesday shop. Can you take the bins out every week without me asking again.

And then, and this is the harder half: let them do it badly. They will not do it the way you do it. The whole system in your head will scream. Let them do it anyway, because a helper who is corrected once does not come back, and you cannot afford that.

You are allowed to need something specific, and asking has never once been the same as failing. Isaiah 40:11 has the shepherd come alongside the ones already carrying rather than expecting them to manage, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a request possible for somebody who has not made one in years.

The numbers are for you too

Everything on this page has been about the person nobody is tending. So this next part is for you, and not for the one in the bed.

The routing on this site is the same every time. If something frightening is happening in your house right now, that is 911, and it is before you finish this page. If the weight tonight is in your own mind and it is more than you can hold, 988 answers, and a person picks up. And the appointment you have been quietly not making for yourself is a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist, and it is a call you are allowed to make while you are still the one doing the nursing.

You are inside the circle of people who get looked after, and you have never once been outside it. Isaiah 40:11 has the shepherd carry the ones who are carrying the young, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a carer be counted among the cared for.

There is no rule that says the person doing the nursing has to wait until the nursing is over. There never was one. Somebody said it once in a kitchen and it got handed round.

You have permission to be attended to in the middle of attending to somebody. The Spirit of God is the one who tends the tender, and what is written says he shall gently lead those that are with young, which is a sentence about the one doing the carrying.