You Are Not What Holds Them Up

She keeps her phone face up on the table at dinner. Everybody has stopped mentioning it.

Four years of this. Four years of the particular ring she has assigned him so she knows without looking, four years of ringing round on a Sunday, four years of a mental map of which of his friends will actually answer, and a version of herself in the car at eleven at night that her own children have seen more than once.

Last month she started going without food on Wednesdays for him, because somebody suggested it and because it was one more thing she could do, and she is honest enough to know that was most of the appeal. One more thing she could do.

And here is the sentence underneath all of it, which she has never said, because if she said it out loud she thinks it might become true: if I stop, he dies.

That is the load. Not the drinking. The being the only thing between him and it.

If your phone is face up on the table too, come and sit down for a bit. This is not going to be a list of things to try.

Love and load bearing are two different jobs

Here is the first thing, and it is the whole thing really.

You have quietly taken on a job that was never advertised and is not yours, and Scripture never once handed it to you. Not the loving: the loving is yours and it is right and nobody is asking you to reduce it by one degree. The other job. The one where the whole thing stays up because you do not sit down. The word says the Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that be bowed down (Psalm 145:14), and the Holy Spirit is the one doing that work rather than a sister in a kitchen.

Nobody appointed you to that. It accumulated, the way these things do, one crisis at a time, and by the time you noticed, the walls were leaning on you.

You are not the load bearing wall in his life, and God has not put that on you. I am not saying that to be kind: it is the written word, that the Lord is thy keeper, and behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep (Psalm 121:4 and 5), and there is only one keeper in that sentence, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that hold in a woman who has not slept properly since the spring.

Read the psalm again and notice who is doing the not sleeping. It is not the one who loves him. It is God.

About the Wednesdays

I want to be careful and honest about the going without, because I suspect you already half know what I am going to say.

If it comes out of love, it is not wrong. But hear the appeal you named yourself: it was one more thing you could do. That is the tell. It joined a list, and the list is the problem, and adding to a list is not the same as putting something down.

Going without food does not hold him up either. It is not a shield, it is not a watch you are keeping, and it does not make God more inclined toward your brother than He already is. When it is anything at all, it is your body joining a prayer you were already praying. It is not a second job on top of the first one.

And here is the part that has to be said plainly, because you are tired and tired people take risks with themselves. Some people must not go without food at all. If you are pregnant or nursing, if you live with diabetes, if you take medication, if you have ever had a hard relationship with eating, if you are underweight, unwell or run down, or if you are simply not sure, speak to your doctor first and let their answer be the answer. And a woman running on four hours a night and somebody else's crisis has a body that needs feeding, not one more thing taken off it. The written word says He giveth His beloved sleep (Psalm 127:2), and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that permission rather than a nice idea for a woman running on nothing.

Please also hear this: you are allowed real help. His drinking is a thing that doctors, counselors, addiction services and family support groups exist for, and using them is not a failure of faith or a lack of trust in God. If tonight is worse than usual, if you are frightened for him or for yourself, ring somebody real: your own doctor, a counselor, a crisis line, and the emergency services if anybody is in danger.

You are allowed to be a person while you love him. He giveth his beloved sleep is in the book (Psalm 127:2), sitting right after a line about rising up early and sitting up late, and the Spirit is what makes that permission rather than a nice sentiment.