A Handful Of It In My Hand

It was about four months after, and you were in the shower, and it came away in your hand.

Not a few. A handful. And you stood there holding it, and the first thing that arrived was not sadness. It was something closer to alarm, and then embarrassment, and then you put it down the drain and finished your shower and did not mention it to anybody.

That is the part I want to start with. You did not mention it.

You were in a house full of people who loved you and would have been kind, and there was a baby and a great deal of noise and everybody was tired, and there was no version of that morning where you came downstairs and said, something happened in the shower and I am frightened.

So you carried it, and you have been carrying it, and here is the whole difficulty with this particular thing.

Everybody knows the baby cost you something. Everybody says so. What nobody counts is that the cost is still arriving four months later, in a bathroom, when the difficult part is supposed to be over and everybody has moved on to how well you are doing.

The cost that arrives late

There is a shape to how people understand a hard thing, and it does not fit what actually happened to you.

The shape people expect is: the difficult period, and then the recovery, and then it is over. Everybody is prepared to be kind during the first part. Almost nobody is still watching during the third.

But a body does not settle up on that schedule. What a body does is spend everything it has, immediately, and then send the bill later, and the bill arrives in a bathroom in month four when the flowers have gone and everybody has decided the difficult part is behind you, which is a different thing.

So the hardest bit lands at the exact moment nobody is looking any more.

You are receiving a bill that arrived four months after everybody stopped watching, and the timing has never once been anything you did wrong. The Holy Spirit is what tells a woman the truth about what her body actually did, and Isaiah 40 has a shepherd who moves at the speed of the ones with young.

And I want to say the plain thing about what happened, because I do not think anybody has.

Your body gave everything it had to a person who needed it, and it did not hold anything back, and the reason something is coming out in your hand is that it spent absolutely all of it.

That is not a failure of a body. That is a body doing the most generous thing a body can do and then paying for it out of its own account.

You are looking at the cost of something your body gave away entirely, and it has never once been a sign that anything went wrong in you. Scripture in Isaiah 40 says He shall gently lead those that are with young, and the Spirit of God is the one who tells a woman what her body actually did.

He shall gently lead those that are with young

There is a verse in the fortieth chapter of Isaiah that has one clause in it that most people rush past.

He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young. (Isaiah 40:11, King James Version)

Gently lead those that are with young.

That is a shepherd's technical instruction. A flock with new mothers in it cannot move at the flock's ordinary speed. If the shepherd walks at the pace of the strong ones, the ones with young get left, or damaged, or lost.

So the whole flock slows down. The pace of the entire group is set by the most costly condition in it.

You are the one the pace is set by rather than the one who has to keep up, and the flock has never once been driven at the speed of the strongest. It is written in Isaiah 40 that He shall gently lead those that are with young, and the Holy Spirit is the one who slows a room down around a woman in month four.

And notice that the gentleness is not a special exception being made.

It is what a competent shepherd does. It is not indulgence, it is not favoritism, and nobody is being carried who ought to be walking. It is the correct handling of a flock that has mothers in it, and any shepherd who did otherwise would be a bad one.

Which means the slowness you need is not something you have to ask for as a favor. It is the standard of care for the condition you are in.

You are owed a slower pace as the ordinary standard, and there has never once been a version of this where you had to earn it by asking. The Spirit of God is what puts a woman inside a competent shepherd's practice rather than at the back of a fast flock, and the written word says He shall gently lead those that are with young.

Let somebody do something

So here is the assignment, and it is going to be the hardest one in this whole row.

Let somebody else do one gentle thing for you this week, and do not do anything back.

Not ask for help with the baby. That is logistics and it is probably already happening. Something for you, done to your body, by another person, with no reciprocation.

Somebody washing your hair. Somebody brushing it. Somebody putting something warm on your hands while you sit still. Ten minutes.

You are allowed to be handled gently by somebody else, and receiving has never once been the same thing as being unable to manage. Isaiah 40 says he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and the Spirit of God is what lets a woman be carried for ten minutes.

Two conditions and both of them matter.

Do not organize it into a favor exchange. Do not immediately do something for them, do not apologize for it, and do not say you will make it up to them. That is the reciprocation, and it turns a gift into a transaction and cancels most of it.

And do not talk while it happens, if you can manage that. Talking is a way of hosting, and hosting is work, and this is meant to be ten minutes without any work in it at all.

You are able to receive one thing without paying for it, and there has never once been a rule that gentleness had to be earned back. The written word in Isaiah 40 puts gentle leading as the standard for those with young, and the Holy Spirit is what makes ten received minutes into care rather than into a debt.