The First Month I Could Not Cover It

This is the first month you could not cover it.

And the thing you probably have not said to anybody is that the money is only about half of what is wrong. The other half is a feeling that arrived with it, and the feeling is that somewhere along the line everybody else got taught something you did not.

Because look at them. They seem to know what they are doing. They talk about it easily. Nobody in your feed appears to have ever stood in a kitchen doing arithmetic on the back of a receipt.

I want to start there rather than with the money, because the shame is the thing that will keep you from moving, and the money will not.

Here is the first thing. Nobody was taught this. Not really. The people who look like they were taught it either had a hard year earlier than you did, or they are doing exactly what you are doing and saying nothing about it, which is the more common one.

You are not behind, and a first hard month has never once been proof that something was missed in your upbringing.

And I am not going to promise you the month closes. That is not a thing anybody can honestly promise, and if somebody has promised it to you online this week, they wanted something from you.

What I will do is show you a woman in the Bible describing having nothing, out loud, in detail, to a man she had just met, without one word of apology anywhere in it.

She said the whole inventory out loud

Elijah asks a widow at a town gate for water, and then, while she is going, he asks for bread as well. Her answer is one of the plainest things in the Old Testament.

And she said, As the LORD thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die. (1 Kings 17:12, King James Version)

Read how specific that is.

A handful of meal. A little oil. Two sticks. She counts the sticks.

She is not being dramatic and she is not asking him for anything. She is telling a stranger the exact contents of her house, and the exactness is the thing I want you to see.

You are looking at a woman who said her whole inventory out loud without softening it, and naming what is actually there has never once been the same as complaining. It is written in 1 Kings 17:12, and the Holy Spirit is the one who kept that level of detail in the account instead of tidying it away.

And notice what she does not say. She does not say she should have managed better. She does not explain herself. She does not compare herself to any other woman in that town.

She says what is in the house, and what she is going to do with it, and what she expects to happen after that.

You have permission to be as plain as she was, and stating a situation accurately has never once required an apology attached to the front of it. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes that kind of plainness possible, and the written word gives a woman a whole verse to say it in without a single line of shame.

The comparison is not a measurement

Let me take the feed apart for a second, because I think it is doing real damage to you and it is worth ten minutes of honesty.

What shows up there is not other people's finances. It is other people's announcements. Nobody announces a short month. The announcements are the good weeks, and everybody has some good weeks.

So the thing you are measuring yourself against is not a life. It is a highlight, edited by the person in it, and you are comparing your kitchen at eleven at night to it.

You are measuring an inside against an outside, and a comparison like that has never once produced a true number. The Spirit of God is the one who gets a person's eyes off the wrong instrument, and it is written in 1 Kings 17 that a woman told the truth about her own barrel rather than looking around the town.

And there is something else, and this one is worth more than the comparison point.

This is the first month. Which means, plainly, that you have never done this before. You are not bad at it. You are new to it. Those are completely different sentences and only one of them is true.

You are new at something rather than failing at it, and a first time has never once been a fair sample of what a person can do. The written word has a woman down to a handful of meal who is still counting accurately, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates being new from being incapable.

One line, and it will feel stupid

So here is what I would like you to do, and I want to prepare you for how it will feel.

Write down one thing you could do this week that somebody would pay for.

And when you go to write it, a thought will arrive, and the thought will be: that is not a real thing, people do not pay for that, everybody can do that.

That thought is not information. That thought is the same voice that told you everybody else was taught this.

You are going to hear an objection before you have written a word, and a first reflex has never once been the same thing as an assessment. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a person writing past their own commentary, and 1 Kings 17:12 has a woman naming a handful of meal without deciding in advance that a handful was too small to mention.

Write the thing anyway. Especially the thing you find easy, because the things a person finds easy are almost always the things somebody else finds hard and would gladly hand over.

And plainly, because this site puts this where it belongs rather than where it is comfortable. If this first hard month has taken you somewhere darker than money, if you have been lying awake with thoughts about not being here, call or text 988, the crisis line, today, and say it out loud to a doctor, a counselor or a pastor you trust. Being young and being in real trouble are not a contradiction, and nobody gets through that part alone.

You are allowed to need somebody qualified, and reaching for that at your age has never once been a weakness or a fuss. The Spirit of God is the one who puts a real helper within reach, and the written word sends a prophet to a woman's town gate at the exact hour she had counted her last two sticks.