I Pushed Through And Then Shouted

The walk is not the problem. I want to establish that early, because you have concluded it is.

Here is the actual sequence, and you can check it against the last four times.

You are empty at about five. You decide to go anyway, because a good father takes his children outside and because you have read something. You get everybody out. The first fifteen minutes are genuinely fine.

And then at about minute seventeen somebody does something small, and you have nothing left to absorb it with, and it comes out of you, and the last five minutes are cold and the walk home is silent and everybody goes to their rooms.

And then you file it. Under: going out does not work in this family.

That is a misfiling and it has cost you about eight months.

Even the youths shall faint

There is a passage in Isaiah about strength that says something surprising before it says the famous part.

Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength. (Isaiah 40:30-31, King James Version)

Even the youths shall faint and be weary.

Read what is being established. Not that some people run out. That the fittest, youngest, most naturally capable people there are will faint and utterly fall, and that this is stated as a fact about how bodies work rather than as a criticism of anybody.

You are not the exception that should have managed it, and it was never a character difference that separated people who run out from people who do not. Isaiah 40:30 establishes that the strongest available person faints, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as a description rather than as a get out.

And then the turn: they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength. Wait. Not push. The renewing is attached to a word that means stopping and staying, which is the exact opposite of the override.

You have a renewing that is attached to waiting rather than to effort, and it was never the pushing through that produced any of it. The written word ties the strength to waiting and not to persistence, and the Spirit of God is what makes stopping a legitimate move rather than a surrender.

The override is the thing that failed

Now let me name what actually went wrong at minute seventeen.

It was not the walk. It was not your children. It was not that going out is unsuited to this household.

It was that you went out with nothing, and going out with nothing has a very reliable shape: fine for fifteen minutes, and then the first small thing that requires absorption gets what is actually there instead of what you would have given it.

That is not a temper problem. It is what an empty person does when something arrives, and it is entirely predictable, and it happens every single time the override runs. The going out did not fail, the override did, and staying in is not a smaller answer than going out.

You are not a father who cannot take his children outside, and it was never the outside part that turned. Isaiah 40 establishes that the strongest faint and then attaches the renewing to waiting, which is exactly why the Spirit of God addresses the decision at five o'clock rather than the minute at seventeen.

And here is what the misfiling costs. Because you filed it under going out does not work, you have stopped going out on the good days as well, and the good days were never the problem.

Two decisions, not one

So the practical part, and it splits one decision into two.

At five o'clock, ask one question: is there anything in me. Not: should I. Is there anything.

You are able to ask what is actually there before deciding anything, and it has never once been weakness to check the tank before driving. The passage puts the renewing on waiting rather than on will, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man standing still at five o'clock for four seconds.

If the answer is yes, even a little, go, and keep it to ten minutes rather than twenty, because ten is inside almost anybody's reserve and twenty is where minute seventeen lives.

If the answer is no, do not go. And say so out loud, plainly, without apology: I have got nothing today, we are staying in.

That sentence does two things. It stops the override, and it tells your children something true about a grown man, which is a thing they will use later.

And do not make up for it tomorrow. There is no debt.

You are permitted to say the sentence out loud, and it has never once been a failure in front of your children to name what is actually there. Isaiah 40:30 says even the youths faint and utterly fall, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in a kitchen with a man saying he has nothing today.