By The Time Everyone Has Shoes On

You wanted to go. That is worth saying first, because you have started to doubt it.

At about four o'clock you thought: we should get out. And you meant it. And then somewhere between that thought and the front door, the whole thing quietly died, and by the time the second shoe had been found you did not want to go anymore and neither did anybody else.

So here is what this site is actually about, and it is not where to go.

It is the twelve minutes at the door.

Because nobody writes about those twelve minutes. Everything written about getting outdoors assumes you are already outside and starts from there, and the entire difficulty for most families is on the near side of the front door and always has been.

Let me name what is in those twelve minutes, because naming it helps.

Somebody cannot find a shoe. Somebody needs the bathroom the moment coats go on. Somebody has changed their mind. There is a negotiation about whether this counts as a walk. The same question is being asked for the fourth time in a voice nobody likes. And underneath it all there is goodwill draining out, minute by minute, until the thing you wanted to do has become a thing you are making everybody do.

That is not a family who dislikes being outside. That is a doorway.

Not by might, nor by power

There is a line given to a man facing a job much bigger than his resources, and what it takes off him is the interesting part.

Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts. (Zechariah 4:6, King James Version)

Not by might, nor by power.

Might is force. Power is capacity, the resources a person can bring. And both of them are taken off the table before anything begins.

Now think about your doorway, because those are exactly the two things that have been in use. Might is the raised voice at minute nine. Power is the organizing: the earlier start, the plan, the being on top of it, the version of you who would have this handled.

And what that verse says is that the thing gets done another way. Not by working harder at the door. Not by becoming a better organized person by Saturday.

You are not going to get this by force or by capacity, and it has never once been the way anything real was built. Zechariah 4:6 removes might and power before the work starts, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a relief to somebody who has been trying to become a tidier person for two years.

I am not going to pretend that sentence was written about school shoes. It was said to a man rebuilding a temple. But the principle it states is not narrow: the work of God does not run on force or on personal capacity, and a parent grinding themselves down at a doorway on a Tuesday is using both.

You are allowed to stop supplying the fuel, and you were never the engine this was supposed to run on. The written word names the Spirit as the means rather than naming a better effort, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in a hallway at ten past four.

Lower the cost of leaving

Here is the practical part, and it is the whole method of this site.

Do not try to increase the willpower. Lower the cost of the door.

Every one of those twelve minutes is a small cost. Nine costs is enough to defeat almost anybody at the end of a working day. So what is needed is not more determination. It is three fewer decisions.

Shoes by the door, tonight, while nothing is happening. That is one whole cost removed in advance, at a moment when nobody is asking you anything.

You are able to lower the cost rather than raise the effort, and it has never once required you to become a more organized person first. The written word takes force and capacity off the table before the work begins, and the Spirit of God is the one who gets a family out of a doorway.

And then let the going be bad. Let one of them wear the wrong thing. Let somebody be grumpy for the first five minutes. Let it be twenty minutes and not a proper walk. Nobody here is trying to have a nice family outing. The aim is to get out of a door, and the outing is not the point of the exercise.

Getting out is allowed to be messy, and twenty minutes badly organized still counts as having gone.

You have not failed anything when it goes out scrappily, and it was never going to count less because it was untidy. Zechariah 4:6 puts the doing outside of force and capacity altogether, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with somebody lining shoes up in a hallway.

Shoes tonight, twenty minutes after that

So here is the assignment and it is in two halves on two different days.

You are two small actions away from having gone out, and it has never once needed to be one continuous decision. Zechariah 4 puts the work outside of force and outside of capacity, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with somebody doing tonight's half tonight.

Tonight: put the shoes by the door. All of them. That is it.

The next day: go out for twenty minutes.

No place to get to. Twenty minutes, out and back, on the streets you already live on. Nowhere needs looking up, and if the looking up has started, the thing that is actually hard has been left behind.

You are able to remove one cost tonight, and it has never once had to be the whole solution to be worth doing. The passage puts the building outside of might and power, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a person putting shoes in a row while the house is quiet.

And if the next day turns out badly and it does not happen, the shoes stay by the door and you go the day after. Nothing is wasted. The shoes are not a promise anybody broke.