By four o'clock you have asked somebody to do something nine times.
Shoes on. Bag off the floor. Answer me. Come to the table. Please stop. Put that down. Get your sister. Turn it off. Look at me while I am talking to you.
None of those were unreasonable. Every one of them was small. And together they are a day, and the day has a currency, and the currency is asking, and by four o'clock the account is empty.
So when somebody says take the children outside, what is being requested is a tenth ask, and a bigger one, aimed at a household that has already argued about nine.
And so it does not happen, and then in the evening it gets filed as something else. Not as: I had nothing left. As: I am not doing enough with them.
I want to unpick that, because those two sentences are not the same and one of them is a lie.
Power to the faint
There is a line in Isaiah that is aimed with unusual precision at exactly this condition.
He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. (Isaiah 40:29, King James Version)
To them that have no might.
Not to them that are running low. Not to the ones who are tired but coping. It says no might, which is the condition of having nothing at all, and it does not treat that as a disqualification.
You are the precise person that verse is aimed at, and it was never written for somebody who still had a reserve to draw on. Isaiah 40:29 names having no might as the qualifying condition rather than the problem, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as being met rather than as being handed a target.
And look at the direction of it. He gives. He increases. Nothing in that sentence is asked of the person who is faint. There is no instruction attached, no condition, no small print about attitude.
You have not been given a requirement in that verse, and you were never asked to produce anything before the giving happens. The written word puts every verb on God's side of the sentence, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a tired woman from reading a promise as another job.
The nine asks are the real day
Now let me say the thing nobody says to mothers, because I think it will move something.
The asking is work. It is not the frame around the work. It is the work.
A morning where you asked nine times and got there in the end is not an easy morning that ought to have left you with energy for something better. It was a long, wearing, unglamorous piece of labor, done at close range, in a voice that was being kept kind on purpose.
The asking is allowed to run out, and a doorway does not need one more request from you to open.
You are running out of something real, and it was never enthusiasm or love that ran out at four o'clock. Isaiah 40 speaks to a condition of no might without asking where it went, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman name the day honestly instead of adding a verdict to it.
And there is a second thing hiding under it. Every one of those nine asks carried the possibility of a refusal, and you have absorbed nine possible refusals since breakfast. That is why the tenth one feels so heavy. It is not the shoes. It is the risk.
You are not weak at four in the afternoon, and you were never dealing with a small request when somebody suggested one more. The passage gives strength to those with none rather than asking why they have none, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in the exact hour when the asking is gone.
A going out with no asking in it
So here is where the practical part turns, and it turns away from the obvious answer.
The obvious answer is: get them outside, it will help. That answer costs a tenth ask, which you do not have, so it is not an answer.
What you need is a version of going out that requires nobody to be asked anything at all.
There is one. Open the front door and sit down on the step.
You are able to be outside without organizing a single person, and it has never once required an instruction to have counted as taking them out. Isaiah 40:29 has God giving to the faint rather than requiring from them, which is exactly why the Holy Spirit points a woman toward a door and a step rather than toward a plan.
No shoes required. No coats. Nobody has to come. You sit on the step, and children, being children, come out to where their mother is, because that is what they do and it costs you nothing.
So here is what I believe is going out over a woman with an empty account at four in the afternoon.
You are not failing your children, and you were never being asked to find a tenth request in an empty day. I am not promising you that the afternoon gets easier. Isaiah 40:29 gives power to the faint and increases strength where there is no might, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my saying so who takes the word lazy off a woman who has been working since seven.
And this, which is the word I came with:
You have permission to go outside without asking anybody for anything, and that has never once counted as less than a properly organized afternoon. The written word puts every action on God's side of the promise, and the Spirit of God is the one who is on a front step with a mother who has nothing left to spend.
Open the door. Sit down.
Declare this over yourself
- Tenth request I do not have in me today, you are not the price of going outside. Isaiah 40:29 says He gives power to the faint and increases strength where there is no might, so by the Holy Spirit I open the door and sit down on my own step in the name of Jesus.
- Word lazy that arrives every evening, you were never an honest account of a day spent asking. The written word speaks to those who have no might without once asking where it went, and by the Holy Spirit I am done misnaming my own work.
- Father, You put every verb of that promise on Your own side. Your word in Isaiah 40 gives to the faint instead of requiring from them, so by Your Spirit I go outside today without asking one person for anything.
Isaiah 40:29
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