The Stairs Are The Whole Problem

Everything written about getting the family outside stops at the front door of the house.

You have two.

There is the door of your apartment, which is where every article ends, and then there is a stairwell, and then there is the door of the building, and the second one is the one that has beaten you.

Three flights. A child who can do stairs but slowly. A child who cannot do them at all and has to be carried. Whatever has to come with you. And your own two arms, which is the number of arms you have.

So by the time you are standing on the sidewalk you have already done the hard part twice, once down and once in your head on the way down, thinking about doing it in reverse in twenty minutes with everybody tired.

I want to say something before anything else, and I want it to land properly.

That is not laziness and it is not an excuse. That is a load. It has a weight and a duration and it is real, and the reason nobody writes about it is that the people who write about getting outside have one door.

The strength of the bearers

There is a sentence in Nehemiah that somebody actually said out loud in the middle of a build, and it got written down.

And Judah said, The strength of the bearers of burdens is decayed, and there is much rubbish; so that we are not able to build the wall. (Nehemiah 4:10, King James Version)

The strength of the bearers of burdens is decayed.

Read who is talking. Not the enemies outside. Not the discouraged people at the back. This is Judah, the ones actually doing it, reporting on the condition of the people who carry things.

And notice it is a report and not a confession. Nobody is apologizing. They are describing a state of affairs accurately: the carriers are worn out, there is too much to move, and the work has stopped for that reason.

You are giving an accurate report and not making an excuse, and you were never the first person to say the carrying is what stopped the work. Nehemiah 4:10 puts that sentence in the mouth of the builders themselves without a rebuke attached, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as being seen rather than being caught.

And the whole verse gets kept. Nobody edits it out to keep morale up. The record of a wall going up includes the day the people carrying it said they could not.

You have a God who wrote the bearers into the account, and it has never once been the strong days alone that made it into the book. The written word keeps the sentence about worn out carriers inside the story of the finished wall, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that land on a woman standing at the top of a stairwell.

Nobody writes about the second door

Here is what I want to hand you, because I think it will change more than any tip.

The stairs are the real door. Not the apartment door. The stairwell is where your outing is actually decided, every single time, and it has been getting measured against advice written for a hallway.

That is why the advice has not worked. It is not aimed at your building.

You are entitled to a measurement that fits your own building, and you were never obliged to make yourself fit one written for somebody else's. Nehemiah 4 grades the work by what the carriers are actually carrying, and the Holy Spirit is the one who hands a woman back the right measurement.

Every piece of it assumes one threshold. Shoes by the door. Coats on. Out. Fine. None of it has three flights in the middle of it with a child on your hip.

The stairs are allowed to be the real door, and naming what actually costs you is not making an excuse.

You are not failing at something simple, and you were never doing the same task as the person who wrote the advice. The passage names the carriers as the reason the work stalled rather than naming a fault in anybody, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a wrong measurement off a woman who has been using it on herself.

Take the load off the stairs

So the practical part, and it is about the load and not about you.

Nothing goes down those stairs that does not have to. Not a bag. Not the thing for later. Not the change of clothes for the maybe. If you would not carry it up, do not carry it down.

Go down with the smallest one and nothing else. Whatever anybody needs, it is upstairs, and upstairs is ten minutes away.

You are permitted to arrive at the bottom carrying almost nothing, and it has never once been neglect to leave the spare things upstairs. Nehemiah 4:10 names too much to move as the thing that stopped the work, and the Spirit of God is the one who is on those stairs with a woman who has put the bag down.

And then do not go anywhere. Stand outside the building. Sit on the step. Walk to the corner and back if it happens.

Because the whole cost was the stairwell, and once the stairwell is paid for, everything after it is free.

You are able to make the descent smaller instead of making yourself stronger, and it was never a matter of you needing more in your arms. Nehemiah 4 names too much to carry as the actual obstacle, which is exactly why the Spirit of God moves a woman to put something down rather than to try harder.

And if you get to the bottom and one of them wants to go straight back up, go back up. You went out. That counted, all of it, including the stairs.