Somebody complains about the route every single time you go out, and this week you worked out who it is.
It is not the children. You checked.
Your eldest, asked directly, said he did not know what you meant. Your youngest said she likes the corner with the wall on it. Neither of them had any idea there was supposed to be a problem.
And you have spent about eight months trying to solve a problem that exists in exactly one person in that house.
That is a slightly deflating discovery and I want to do something useful with it rather than leave you sitting in it, because there is something genuinely good on the other side of this, and it is not the thing you would expect.
Day unto day uttereth speech
There is a couplet in Psalm 19 about repetition that says something surprising about what repeats.
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. (Psalm 19:1-2, King James Version)
Day unto day uttereth speech.
Read the mechanism there. It is not that one spectacular day says something. It is that day hands to day, over and over, and the speech is in the handing rather than in any individual day.
That is a description of repetition doing work that no single occasion could do.
You are looking at repetition described as a form of speech, and it was never sameness that stopped anything meaning something. Psalm 19:2 puts the utterance in the day after day rather than in the remarkable day, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as reassurance rather than as a lecture about patience.
And notice who has to notice. Nobody in that Psalm is required to be impressed. The declaring happens whether or not anybody is paying attention, and the verse after says there is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard.
You have something going on out there that does not depend on your interest in it, and it was never your enthusiasm holding the thing up. The written word makes the speaking continuous and independent of any audience, and the Spirit of God is what takes the responsibility for meaning off a tired woman on a familiar street.
Boredom is an adult condition
Now let me say something about the boredom itself, because I think it has been misdiagnosed as a problem with the route.
Small children do not experience repetition the way adults do. A four year old on the same street for the ninth time is not on the same street. They are checking whether the thing behind the wall is still there, which is a live question to them and a settled one to you.
What has happened to you is not a fault. It is the ordinary adult condition, which is that once a thing is known it stops being looked at, and the looking is what makes a street interesting.
The boredom is yours to own and not theirs to fix, and a route that works for them is not failing anybody.
You are not failing your children with that route, and it was never their afternoon that needed rescuing. Psalm 19 puts the speech in the repetition itself rather than in novelty, which is exactly why the Spirit of God is unbothered by a family walking the same four streets.
And here is the part that will help. Because you have been trying to solve their boredom, every walk has had a small project attached to it. Somebody has been managing the afternoon, checking whether it is going well, weighing up whether next time should be different. That is work, and it is invisible, and it is most of why you come back tired.
Stop improving it
So the practical part, and it consists of stopping something rather than starting something.
Walk the usual route and do not try to make it better.
You are able to go out with nothing to achieve, and it has never once been laziness to walk a street without a plan for it. The passage lets the declaring happen without requiring anybody to arrange it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman going out with no project in her hand.
No new direction. No thing to look out for. No enthusiasm you do not have. Just the four streets, at their pace, with whatever they want to stop and look at.
And let them lead it. Not as a technique for making them enjoy it, because they already enjoy it. Simply because they are the ones who find it interesting and you are not, and the person who finds a thing interesting should probably be setting the pace on it.
You are permitted to follow rather than to run it, and it has never once been abdication to let a four year old decide where to stop. Psalm 19:2 has day handing to day without anybody organizing the handing, and the Spirit of God is the one who is out on an ordinary street with somebody who has stopped managing.
So here is what I believe is going out over a woman who has been solving a problem nobody else had.
You are not letting your children down with four streets, and you were never running an afternoon that needed improving. I am not promising you that the route gets interesting. Psalm 19:2 says day unto day uttereth speech and puts the whole utterance in the repeating, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my saying so who takes eight months of a project off a mother.
And this, which is the word I came with:
You have permission to be bored and to go anyway, and that has never once made the walk worth less to anybody on it. The written word lets the declaring continue without requiring an audience for it, and the Spirit of God is the one who is beside a woman standing at a drain for four minutes.
Same route. No project.
Declare this over yourself
- Boredom I have been trying to fix on my children's behalf, you are mine and you are not theirs. Psalm 19:2 says day unto day uttereth speech and puts the whole of it in the repeating, so by the Holy Spirit I walk the usual route today and improve nothing in the name of Jesus.
- Project I have carried on every one of these walks, you were never asked for by a single person in this house. The written word lets the declaring go on without anybody arranging it, and by the Holy Spirit I am done managing an afternoon nobody wanted managed.
- Father, You put the speaking in the day handing to the day. Your word in Psalm 19 makes repetition itself the thing that says something, so by Your Spirit I go out with nothing to achieve today and I let them lead it.
Psalm 19:2
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