Everyone Thinks I Am Fine

Everyone thinks you are fine.

Your mother thinks so. Your brother certainly thinks so, because you are the one he calls when something needs handling. At the family table you are the one who picks up the check, and you have picked it up twice since this started.

And the terrible arithmetic of that is not lost on you. You picked up a check you could not afford in order to keep anybody from finding out that you cannot afford checks.

Let me say first what this is not.

This is not you being proud in the way a sermon would mean it. I do not think you are protecting a reputation. I think you are protecting a position: you are the one who helps, and there is no version of the family where you are the one who needs helping, and stepping out of the position feels less like admitting something and more like disappearing.

You are not a fraud for having kept it quiet, and a held tongue has never once been the same thing as a lie.

And I am not going to promise you that telling somebody makes the money appear. It does not. The number is the number tomorrow morning either way.

What I want to do is take the word confession off it, because that word is doing a great deal of damage and it is the wrong word.

Both directions of pretending

There is a proverb about this exact thing, and the surprising part is how even handed it is.

There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing: there is that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches. (Proverbs 13:7, King James Version)

Two men. One makes himself rich and has nothing. One makes himself poor and has a great deal.

And the verse passes no sentence on either of them. It simply says both things happen, which is an unusual thing for a proverb to do, and worth noticing.

You are described in a verse that reports the behavior without convicting the man, and being seen accurately has never once been the same as being condemned. Proverbs 13:7 names the pretending plainly, and the Holy Spirit is the one who puts it there as an observation rather than as a charge.

There is something else in that pairing. Both men are hiding, and they are hiding in opposite directions, which means the hiding is not about money at all.

A man who makes himself poor while holding plenty is not protecting his money. He is protecting himself from what people would want. And a man who makes himself rich while holding nothing is protecting himself from what people would think.

You have been managing a picture and not a bank balance, and a picture has never once been the thing that actually pays a bill. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates those two, and the written word puts both pretenders in the same sentence so neither can look down on the other.

The word confession is doing damage

Here is the part I most want to get across, and then we will get to what you actually do today.

Telling your brother has been filed in your head as a confession. A confession is what a person makes about a wrong. It comes with shame built into the word, and it implies that the thing being disclosed is a fault.

Being short is not a fault. It is a circumstance. And the difference between those two words is the difference between a conversation you can have and a conversation you will keep not having for another five weeks.

You are holding a circumstance and not an offense, and a shortfall has never once been a moral event. The written word describes a man with nothing without once calling him wicked, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a fact from turning into a verdict in a man's own chest.

So what if it is not a confession. What is it.

It is a report. It is the thing you would say if a pipe burst in the kitchen. The pipe burst, I have got a bucket under it, I need a hand.

That is a completely different sentence, and you can say that sentence out loud.

You have a plain report to make and not an apology to deliver, and a man saying where things stand has never once lost standing by saying it. Proverbs 13:7 lets a man be described exactly as he is, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes plainness possible in a room where you have always been the strong one.

What the picking up of checks is costing

One more thing, and it is the hardest part of this article.

The performance is not free. I do not mean the checks, though those are real money and you know it.

I mean that every week you spend as the one who is fine is a week in which nobody in that family can offer you anything, because there is nothing visible to offer it to. Your brother would help. He would. He cannot, because as far as he knows there is nothing to help with.

You are standing in a room full of people who would move if they knew, and being the one who helps has never once required being the one who never needs it. The Spirit of God is the one who built families to work in both directions, and it is written in Proverbs that a man can look like one thing and be another without anybody noticing.

And I will say the plain thing, because on this site it goes where it belongs. If the performance has got heavy enough that you have started thinking the people at that table would be better off without you in it, that is not a money problem and it is not something to keep managing on your own. Call or text 988, the crisis line, today, and say it out loud to a doctor, a counselor or a pastor you trust. There is no version of this where that is off the subject.

You are allowed to be carried by somebody qualified, and reaching for that has never once cost a man his standing anywhere that mattered. The written word puts no shame on a man with nothing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets a real helper within reach of a man who has been performing for months.