They Want Me to Try One More Thing

The same words go at the top of every article on this site. This is not medicine. I am not a clinician, nothing on this page is treatment, and nothing I write ever stands in the place of a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist. If anybody in that house is unwell, ring somebody qualified today, before anything else here.

Now. They came again on Sunday with another one.

Somebody had heard about something. Somebody's cousin had a friend. There was a thing on a program. And it arrived at your table with the whole family behind it, warm and hopeful and completely sincere, and every single face in that room was waiting to see what you would do with it.

And you said you would look into it. Because what else is there to say.

And then you went home and you did not look into it, and now there is a small debt in the room that will be collected next Sunday, gently, by somebody who loves you.

That is the position, and I do not think anybody outside a family like this has any idea how heavy it is.

Everybody carries their own, and that includes you

There is a line in Galatians that sits a few verses away from one about bearing one another's burdens, and the two of them together are the answer.

For every man shall bear his own burden. (Galatians 6:5, King James Version)

A few lines earlier the same chapter says to bear one another's burdens. And then this. And people treat that as a contradiction, and it is not one.

The first is about lifting what somebody cannot carry alone. This one is about the thing that belongs to a person and cannot be handed over: their own decisions, their own weight, the choices only they can make.

You are carrying something that has never once been transferable to a room full of people. Galatians 6:5 puts a person's own burden back in their own hands after asking others to help with the rest, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets somebody take back a decision a family has been making for them.

And notice what that means for the suggestions. They can help carry a great deal. They cannot carry this, and offering a suggestion is not the same as taking any of it.

You have been handed advice by people who have never once been able to take the weight with it. The Spirit of God is the one who tells the difference between help and suggestion, and it is written that every man shall bear his own burden, said in the same chapter as the instruction to help with everything else.

Saying no to the thing is not saying no to the person

Let me be practical, because this is the fear and it is the whole reason nothing changes.

You believe that refusing the suggestion refuses the love behind it. In a family like ours, that is a real fear and not a silly one, because a suggestion is how a lot of people in our houses say I am worried about you.

So the answer is not to refuse less. It is to answer the love and the suggestion separately, in the same breath.

Thank you for thinking about me. I am not going to do that one. Two sentences. The first one is entirely true and it is the one they actually came for. The second one is a decision, and it is yours, and Galatians says so.

You are able to receive the love and decline the idea, and nobody has ever once needed those to arrive together. Galatians 6:5 keeps a person's own burden with them while the chapter keeps everybody else close, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives somebody the two sentences.

And I will say plainly what this page is not going to do. I am not going to tell you which suggestions to take. I am not able to and it would make this page one more voice at that table.

You were never asked to take advice from a page either, and nobody writing has ever once been able to see anything. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps a person from being handed one more thing, and what is written returns the weight to the person carrying it rather than distributing it around a table.

The plain routing, and it is not a suggestion

Here is the part of this page that is not comfort, and it is the one thing here that is not somebody's idea.

If something is happening right now that frightens you, that is 911. If the heavy thing today is in your own mind, and if the Sundays have started to be something you dread for a week beforehand, 988 answers, and a real person picks up. And whatever the situation is, it belongs with a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist, and if the contact has lapsed, that call is today.

You are keeping one line open rather than adding another one. Galatians 6:5 leaves a person with their own decisions rather than with everybody's contributions, and the Holy Spirit is the one who helps somebody tell maintenance apart from the next suggestion.

That is the only thing on this page with a day attached to it. Everything else can be declined.

You have one appointment that has never once been in the same category as anything offered at that table. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in a call made by somebody who has stopped taking on new ideas, and what is written gives every person their own burden and does not ask them to take on anybody else's.