The Good Week Scares Me

It was a good week.

Enough came in. More than enough, possibly, for the first time in a while. And on the Friday, instead of whatever a person is supposed to feel, there was a tightening.

Because a good week means the next one is due to be bad. That is not superstition exactly. It is the pattern, and you have watched the pattern for long enough to trust it more than you trust a Friday.

So you did not have a good week. You had a warning.

You are allowed to have the week you are actually in, and bracing for the next one has never once made it arrive more gently.

I want to say what this article is not going to do, so that you can hear the rest of it.

It is not going to tell you how to smooth it out. That is a different subject entirely and it belongs on a different site, and any advice of that kind from a stranger who does not know your month is worthless.

And it is not going to promise you that the pattern steadies. I do not know that. Nobody does.

What I want to look at is the Friday itself, and what the bracing costs, and whether it buys anything at all.

Feed me with food convenient for me

There is a prayer in Proverbs that asks for something almost nobody prays for, and it is the most honest thing about money in the book.

Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me. (Proverbs 30:8, King James Version)

Feed me with food convenient for me.

Not: give me a great deal so I never have to worry. Not: keep me poor so I stay humble. Give me the amount that is right for the day I am in.

You are looking at a prayer for the present portion rather than for a cushion, and a day's provision has never once been described in that verse as a lesser answer. Proverbs 30:8 says feed me with food convenient for me, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put a request that modest into the record.

And notice what he asks to be removed first. Vanity and lies.

Before the request about money comes a request about what is true. He wants to be free of falsehood first, and then he wants his portion.

You have a prayer that clears the air before it ever mentions bread, and a mind full of forecasts has never once been the same thing as a mind seeing clearly. The Holy Spirit is the one who clears out what is not true, and it is written in Proverbs 30:8 with the lies removed before the food arrives.

What the bracing buys

So let us do the arithmetic on the bracing, honestly, because this is a practical question and it deserves a practical answer.

What does it actually produce.

It does not change next week. Next week will be what it is regardless of what your chest does on Friday.

It does not prepare you. There is no preparation in it. Preparation would be an action, and this is a feeling that occupies the place where an action would go.

You are paying for something that delivers nothing, and a bad feeling on a good Friday has never once made a lean Tuesday easier. The written word asks for the present portion rather than for an insurance policy, and the Spirit of God is the one who puts a cost where a man can look at it.

And here is what it does cost, and you know this one.

It costs the good week itself. Which means that in a year with, say, twenty good weeks in it, not one of them got had. Every one of the twenty was spent inside the week after it.

That is not a small loss. That is most of a year.

You have been spending every good week in the following one, and a year of Fridays has never once been a small thing to hand over to a week that has not happened. The Holy Spirit is the one who brings a person back into the day they are standing in, and Proverbs 30:8 asks for food convenient for today.

Name what came in, out loud

So the assignment, and it is a mouth assignment, and it is deliberately small.

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

Out loud. At the table, in the truck, wherever you are on a Friday. Say the actual things. Not a total. The specific pieces: this job, that half day, the thing that came in on Wednesday that you had forgotten about.

You are able to say a list out loud on a Friday, and naming the actual pieces has never once been the same as counting a total. The Spirit of God is the one who is present at an ordinary kitchen table, and the written word asks for the portion that belongs to the day being lived.

And the reason it is out loud rather than in your head is simple and it is not mystical. A thing said out loud is heard by the person saying it. A thing thought is not.

You already know the number in your head. The number in your head is what starts the bracing. Saying the pieces out loud is a different act and it does a different thing.

You are able to do something with your mouth that you cannot do in your head, and a list spoken into a room has never once landed the same way as a list counted silently. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a sentence said out loud, and it is written in Proverbs 30:8 as a prayer spoken rather than a worry carried.