Ten Minutes I Would Give Anybody Else

Somebody rings and needs twenty minutes and you find them.

Not grudgingly. You find them properly, and you are present in them, and afterward you do not resent it and you do not think about it again. That is real care and you give it away weekly.

That happens most weeks. Sometimes twice. And the arithmetic of your week has enough give in it, always, for anybody who asks.

Now try to put ten minutes in that same week for yourself and watch what happens.

There is no room. The week goes hard. Everything in it turns out to be immovable, and the ten minutes gets pushed to a day when things are quieter, and that day has not arrived since 2019.

I want to look at that closely, because on the face of it, it makes no sense at all. The same week, the same woman, the same clock. One request finds time immediately. The other one cannot be accommodated.

Which means the constraint is not time. There is nothing wrong with your week. Something else is doing the refusing.

What is actually being refused

Here is the difference between the two requests, and it is the whole thing.

When somebody asks, there is a person on the other end. A real person, with a face, who needs something, and whose need is visible to you.

When it is your own ten minutes, there is nobody on the other end. There is only a woman who could probably manage without it, and who has managed without it for years, and who is therefore not a need at all but an optional extra in a busy week.

The request cannot be granted because it has not been made by anybody. There is no petitioner.

You are declining a request that has never once had a person attached to it, and no need of yours has ever been presented by anybody you could see. The Holy Spirit is what makes a woman visible in her own week, and Mark 6 has somebody putting rest into a schedule as an instruction rather than as an option.

And here is the second half.

Ten minutes is not a small ask. It is the smallest possible ask. If ten minutes cannot get through, then the size of the request was never the issue, and no smaller version of it will get through either.

That matters, because most women in this position keep trying to make the request smaller. Five minutes. Two. And it fails at every size, because a thing that is being refused on principle does not get approved by shrinking it.

You are refusing something at every size it comes in, and no smaller version has ever once been approved. Scripture in Mark 6 records rest being commanded rather than permitted, and the Spirit of God is the one who puts a woman on her own list.

Come ye yourselves apart

There is a moment in Mark's Gospel where Jesus deals with exactly this, and He does not do it gently.

And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat. (Mark 6:31, King James Version)

Read what kind of sentence that is.

It is an instruction. He said unto them. It is not an offer, it is not a suggestion, and there is nothing in it that requires the disciples to have first decided they were tired enough.

And look at the reason given. There were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.

That is the entire justification, and it is the exact description of your week. Many coming and going. No time to eat properly. He does not add anything else. He does not say they had earned it or that a particular hard thing had happened.

You are inside the exact condition He named as sufficient, and there has never once been a further test attached to that instruction. It is written in Mark 6 that He said come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while, and the Holy Spirit is the one who puts a command where a woman has only ever had a permission.

And notice the two words in the middle. Ye yourselves.

He does not say come apart with me and let us do something restorative together. He says come ye yourselves apart, which is to say, go somewhere on your own without anybody in it.

The rest He orders is not more ministry in a nicer setting. It is a woman on her own with nothing being asked of her.

You are ordered into a place with nobody in it, and rest has never once meant doing something useful somewhere quieter. The Spirit of God is what puts an empty place into a full week, and the written word says come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while.

Put it in the calendar

So here is the assignment, and it is administrative on purpose.

Put ten minutes in the calendar tonight the way you would for anybody who asked.

In the actual calendar. With a time on it. In whatever system you use for the things that actually happen, rather than in the vague place where the things you intend to do live.

Here is why the calendar and not the intention.

You are putting a thing where it can be kept rather than where it can be meant, and an intention has never once survived a week on its own. Mark 6 says come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while, and the Holy Spirit is what makes rest an appointment instead of a wish.

Everything you do for other people has a time attached. That is why it happens. The twenty minutes you gave on Tuesday existed in the day, at a time, with a beginning, and that is the only reason it took place.

The ten minutes for yourself has never had a time attached. It has only ever been an intention, and an intention is not a thing that occupies a day.

Give it a time and it becomes the same kind of object as everything else that happens in your life. That is how care gets from an intention into a Wednesday.

And put something warm in it. Warm water, a bath, sitting somewhere with nothing in your hands. Not admin. Not a job you have been meaning to do. Ten minutes with nobody in it, which is what He actually ordered.

You are able to give ten minutes the same standing as everything else that happens, and an intention has never once been able to occupy a day. The written word in Mark 6 commands a rest into a schedule with many coming and going, and the Holy Spirit is what turns a calendar entry into care rather than into another task.