The Only One Of You Who Turns Up

Her brother rang on Sunday and told her she was wonderful, and she had to put the phone down on the counter and stand there for a second.

He meant it. That is the thing that makes it so hard to explain to anybody. There was nothing in his voice except love and gratitude and a genuine wish that he lived nearer, and he asked after their mother properly and he listened to the answer.

And he has been three times this year.

She does the rest. The appointments, the medication, the woman who comes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the arrangements for when she does not, the night in February, the conversation with the consultant that she had on her own in a corridor and then had to repeat twice down the phone to two men who were both very moved.

She is fifty four. She has a job. She is doing this in the gaps of a life she is not really living at the moment.

And what has grown in her over about eighteen months is an anger she cannot look at directly. Not at their mother, ever. At two men she loves, for the crime of being grateful from a distance, which is not actually a crime, which is exactly why she cannot say a word about it to anybody.

And a cousin said last month, kindly: you should all fast for her together.

She said that was a nice idea. And what went through her was not hope. It was the very old thought: I will end up doing that one on my own as well.

If you have put a phone down on a counter and stood there, come and sit at this table. Somebody else is doing the plates tonight.

The anger is information, not a verdict

Let us take it first, because it has been held all this time as proof of something ugly.

Anger like that is what appears in a person doing more than one person's share with no legitimate way to say so. It is not a sign of loving her less than they do, and it is not evidence of keeping score. It is what a body does when a load is unequal and there is no forum in which to mention it.

Nothing here is going to tell you to have a conversation with your brothers. That may be right and it may be a disaster, and it is not this page's business and you know that family better than anybody.

You are not wicked for it, and you were never once assessed on how graciously you carried an unequal load. That is not a soft word said to a woman at a counter. It is written that the Lord looketh on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), and the Holy Spirit is the one who was in that corridor with you when the consultant spoke, when nobody else was, and He is not shocked by what is in you now.

Who does the upholding

There is a verse people say to each other constantly, and the last clause of it is the one that belongs to you.

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.Isaiah 41:10

Read the three promises at the end and notice that they escalate.

Strengthen is help for somebody who is still standing. Help is somebody coming alongside. Uphold is the word for what happens to a thing that is no longer holding itself up, and God puts it last, and He attaches it to His own right hand.

He did not say He would find you some assistance. He said He would do the upholding Himself, and the escalation in that sentence means He is not surprised by a person reaching the third stage.

You are upheld by the right hand of His righteousness, and it does not get tired at the end of a long February. I am not saying it to make an unfair situation bearable: it is what the verse promises and the order it puts it in (Isaiah 41:10), and it is His Spirit, not this page, who makes it a real thing in a corridor rather than a card on a windowsill.

And going without will not even the load

Here is a thing that needs saying plainly, because of exactly where your cousin's suggestion landed.

Going without food is not a shift on somebody's rota. It does not add to the care and it does not make up for what two other people are not doing, and if it were that kind of thing then you would simply have found one more job that lands on you.

You are not required to make up anybody else's share, before God or anywhere else. Scripture says the Lord is thy keeper, the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand (Psalm 121:5), and it is His Spirit who makes that a division of the work rather than a phrase, and the keeping of your mother has never depended on which of her children turns up.

Now the sentence this site says everywhere. Some people must not go without food at all, and being one of them takes nothing away from you. Diabetes, pregnancy, medication, any hard relationship with eating, being underweight, unwell, elderly or simply unsure: speak to your doctor and let their answer be the answer. And a woman doing all of this in the gaps of her own life needs feeding, not one more thing taken off her. You are not one step further from God because of what your body needs. Scripture says the Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works (Psalm 145:9), and the Holy Spirit has never once come in a smaller measure to anybody on account of a body.

And if this week has more in it than a page can carry, if you are frightened for yourself, put this down and ring somebody real: your doctor, your mother's team, a counselor, a crisis line, and the emergency services if anybody is in danger tonight. That is not a road around God. That is help He put in the world on purpose, and her care stays with her doctors exactly as it is.