My Mother Has No Idea

You said fine twice in the same call.

Once near the beginning, when she asked how you were. And once near the end, when she circled back to it the way she does, and asked whether everything was all right, and you said yes, fine, and then said something about the weather.

The call lasted eleven minutes and you have thought about it for two days.

She has no idea. Nobody does. Two years of this and there is not one person outside that house who knows what the last week of the month is like in it.

And you are good at it now, which is its own kind of unpleasant discovery. There is a way of talking about your circumstances that is entirely truthful and gives away nothing at all. Things are busy. We are getting on with it. Yes, still at the same place, keeping going.

None of that is a lie. Every word of it is placed to prevent a question.

And there is a particular version of it that is worse, and you do it when somebody suggests something you cannot do. When they float a weekend away, or a meal out, or the thing at Christmas. You do not say that it is out of reach. You say the dates are difficult.

That one costs you something every time, and you would find it hard to explain why.

So let me say clearly what this article is not going to do.

I am not going to tell you to tell your mother.

Not her, not your family, not everybody, and there is no suggestion here that the concealing has to end. You may have entirely good reasons for who does not know, and they are yours, and a stranger writing an article does not get a vote on which relationships are simple enough to carry this.

One person. And you choose who, and it does not have to be anybody in this article.

Bear ye one another's burdens

There is an instruction in Galatians that is usually read from one side only.

Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. (Galatians 6:2, King James Version)

Bear ye one another's burdens.

We nearly always hear this as an instruction to go and help somebody. Look around, find the person struggling, get underneath their load. And that is in there and it is right.

But look at what the sentence actually requires, because it needs two people and only one of them is doing the lifting.

For anybody to bear another person's burden, somebody has to let their burden be borne. There has to be a person who has said what the burden is. Otherwise the instruction cannot be obeyed by anyone, because nobody can carry a weight they have not been told about.

So there is a second half to this verse, and it is not optional, and it is the harder side for a certain kind of person.

You have made yourself unbearable in the precise sense of that word. Not difficult. Impossible to bear alongside. For two years you have carried something and arranged matters so that no one is able to get their hands under any part of it.

And then the last phrase: and so fulfill the law of Christ.

That is high language for what looks like ordinary neighbourliness. This mutual carrying is not a nice extra. It is named as the way the law of Christ gets fulfilled, which means the whole arrangement, the telling and the carrying together, is close to the center of what following Him looks like.

Every time you say fine, one small piece of that becomes impossible in your circle. Not because you owe anybody an account, but because nobody can obey that verse toward you.

Somebody has to let their burden be borne, and a load nobody knows about has never once been able to be carried by anyone. Galatians 6:2 makes the mutual carrying the way the law of Christ is fulfilled, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody who has just said fine for the second time in one call.

The hiding is the expensive part

Here is the practical half, and it is about the cost you have not been counting.

The concealment is a job, and you have been doing it unpaid for two years.

Think about what it actually involves. You track who has been told what. You keep the account consistent between people who talk to each other. You manage the dates being difficult, and then remember later that they were difficult, in case it comes up. You brace slightly before certain calls.

That is administration, and it runs constantly in the background, and it is a large part of why you finish those eleven minute calls more tired than you started them.

And it does something else, which is harder to see and worse. It puts a small distance into every relationship you use it in.

Because you cannot be fully present with somebody while managing what they know about you. Part of you is always slightly outside the conversation, watching it, steering. And they feel that, without being able to name it, and over two years it quietly thins things out. Your mother does not know why the calls feel shorter than they used to. It is not that you love her less. It is that a portion of you is occupied.

So the hiding has not protected the relationships. It has been slowly costing you the closeness in them, which is the exact thing you were trying to protect.

And here is what I think you are actually afraid of, because it is not pity. It is that saying it out loud makes it real in a way that living it somehow has not. As long as nobody has been told, it remains a private situation that might resolve before anybody has to know. Saying it fixes it in place.

But it is already real. It has been real for two years. The only thing the silence has changed is who is in it with you.

The hiding has been costing you the closeness rather than protecting it, and silence has never once made this lighter. The written word puts the mutual carrying at the center of the law of Christ, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with somebody who has been managing what people know for two years.

One person, one true sentence

So here is the assignment, and it is exactly one sentence long.

Tell one person one true sentence about your situation this week.

One person. You choose. A brother, a friend from years back, somebody at church, the man you have coffee with. Not necessarily anybody in your family, and specifically not somebody whose reaction you would then have to manage.

One sentence. Not the whole account. You do not have to explain how it happened, or how long it has been, or what you have tried.

Something like: things are tighter than I have let on. Or: the last week of the month is hard for us at the moment.

That is all. One true sentence, said once.

And then here is the part that makes it work: do not soften it afterward.

You will want to. Almost immediately you will want to add that it is fine really, or that lots of people have it worse, or that it is only temporary. Every one of those takes the sentence back, and if you take it back, the person you told has been handed a thing and then had it removed, and nothing has actually been said.

Say it and stop.

And do not decide in advance what you want from them. You are not asking for anything. You do not need advice and you are not looking for help, and if you go in wanting a particular response you will be disappointed by a perfectly good one.

You are simply making yourself possible to stand beside. That is the whole of it.

And most of the time the response is quieter than you fear. Not pity. Usually something like: I did not know that. And then, often, a sentence back about something they have not been saying either.

You are able to say one true sentence and leave it standing, and telling it has never once cost you anything that was really yours. Galatians 6:2 says bear ye one another's burdens, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a man saying one honest sentence to one friend.