My Husband Gets Paid On Fridays

His comes in on a Friday. Every Friday. The same amount, at the same hour, for eleven years.

Yours comes in when it comes in. Some months there is a great deal of it. Some months there is a week with nothing in it at all.

And somewhere in the last two years, without either of you saying anything, a sentence formed in your head.

He is the reliable one and I am the other thing.

You are not the unreliable half of anything, and money arriving on a different rhythm has never once made it a lesser contribution.

I want to be careful about two things before we go further, because this subject can be handled badly in two different directions.

I am not going to tell you that his steady income is nothing special. It is a real gift and you both know it.

And I am not going to tell you that the unevenness does not create a genuine difficulty in a household. It does. Planning around two different rhythms is harder than planning around one, and that is a fact rather than a feeling.

What I want to look at is the sentence. Because the difficulty is real and the sentence is not, and it is the sentence you carry into the kitchen on a Friday.

The body is not one member, but many

There is a passage in Corinthians about parts of a body, and the argument it makes is about exactly this kind of comparison.

For the body is not one member, but many. (1 Corinthians 12:14, King James Version)

Not one member, but many.

The whole passage is about parts that work differently from each other, and about the mistake a part makes when it measures itself against a different part and concludes it does not belong.

You are inside a passage written for a part comparing itself to a different part, and a different function has never once meant a lesser one. 1 Corinthians 12:14 says for the body is not one member, but many, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put a whole argument there against exactly the comparison you have been making.

And look at what the passage never does. It never resolves the difference by making the parts the same.

The foot does not become a hand. The argument is not that they are secretly alike. The argument is that a body made of one repeated part would not be a body.

You have been trying to resolve a difference that was never meant to be resolved, and two things working differently has never once been a problem needing a solution. The Holy Spirit is the one who holds different functions together without ranking them, and it is written in 1 Corinthians 12:14 that the many is the point rather than the difficulty.

What steady and uneven each actually do

Let me put the two side by side, plainly, because only one of the two columns ever gets looked at.

Steady is predictable and it is capped. It is the same on a good month and the same on a hard one, and it cannot respond to anything.

Uneven is unpredictable and it is responsive. It can go up when there is more work, and it does, and in most households like yours it is the thing that has covered the unexpected ones.

Neither of those is better. They are two different capabilities, and a household with both has something a household with one of them does not.

You are the half that can respond, and a capacity to move has never once been worth less than a capacity to stay the same. The written word refuses to make the parts alike in order to value them, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds two functions together without a ranking between them.

And I would ask you to look at something specific, because women in your position almost never do this arithmetic.

Think about the last three unexpected things. The car, the tooth, the thing at the school.

Which income covered them.

You have been carrying the unexpected ones for years and filing it as unreliability, and the money that met an emergency has never once been the unsteady part of a household. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person see their own contribution accurately, and 1 Corinthians 12:14 says the many is what makes a body.

Say it out loud on a Friday

So the assignment, and there is a reason it lands on a Friday for you in particular.

Name out loud what came in this week, however small, and thank God for it by name.

On a Friday, in the kitchen, out loud, when his arrives. That is the hardest and best moment for it, because that is the moment the sentence usually runs.

Say the actual pieces of what came in from your side. Not a total, and not compared to anything. The pieces.

You are able to say your own list out loud on the day his arrives, and two things named in the same kitchen have never once needed ranking against each other. The Spirit of God is the one who is present at a kitchen table on a Friday evening, and the written word puts many members in one body without a hierarchy.

And say it where he can hear it, if that is possible.

Not as a point being made. Not with anything attached. Just the pieces, said out loud, in the room, so that the house hears both incomes named on the same evening.

You are able to let both be named in one room, and a contribution said out loud has never once needed defending afterward. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a household hears itself accurately, and it is written in 1 Corinthians 12:14 that a body is not one repeated thing.