I Am Tired Of Being Resourceful

People say it about you like it is a compliment.

He can make anything work. Give him a bit of wire and he will sort it out. And it is true, and eleven years ago you would have taken it as a compliment, and now it lands differently.

Because you can see the whole inventory. The handle held on with something that was not made for it. The thing propped with a wedge you cut yourself. The two parts joined by a solution nobody has ever seen before because you invented it on a Tuesday.

Every one of those is a small victory, and every one of them is also a small monument to not having had the money.

And you are tired. Not tired of the jobs. Tired of the cleverness. Tired of every single thing in this house requiring a solution before it can simply work.

Let me put this down before anything else. Not knowing how is not a character flaw, and neither is having had to invent everything. Being resourceful is a genuine skill and it is also genuinely exhausting, and both of those are allowed to be true at the same time.

They shall renew their strength

There is a promise in Isaiah about tiredness that most people quote and almost nobody reads the front of.

But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31, King James Version)

Look at what comes just before it in that chapter. God spends several verses on the fact that even young men faint and fall, which is unusual, because Scripture is not usually in a hurry to point out that strong people run out.

And notice the word renew. It is a word for something that has been used up. You do not renew a thing that is still full.

You have a promise built specifically for somebody who has run out rather than for somebody who is managing, and being tired after eleven years has never once been a failure of endurance. Isaiah 40:31 puts the renewing after the running out on purpose, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that land as recognition rather than as an instruction to keep going.

And notice the order in the second half. Wings, then running, then walking. It descends. The last and hardest thing on that list is walking without fainting, which is the ordinary daily version, and it comes last because it is the one that takes the most.

You are living in the last clause of that verse rather than the first, and the ordinary walking has never once been the easy part of anything. The Spirit of God is the one who supplies something to a person who has spent everything, and it is written in Isaiah that the renewing is offered to the ones who have run out.

What the cleverness has been costing

Here is the part nobody counts, and it is worth counting.

Every improvised solution in this house requires you to remember it. The handle needs to be turned a particular way. The wedge has to go back exactly where it was. The invented join has to be explained to anybody who touches it.

So every one of them is a small permanent tenancy in your head, and there are about forty of them.

That is what the tiredness actually is. Not the work. The load of being the only person who knows how any of it functions.

You have been carrying forty small pieces of knowledge that only exist in one head, and being the person who holds a house together has never once been a light thing to be. It is written in Isaiah 40:31 that the renewing is for people who have run out, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man name a load he has never once mentioned.

And here is the second cost, which is quieter. Resourcefulness stops being a choice at some point and becomes an identity, and once it is an identity it is very hard to spend money on something even when the money is there.

A man who has made everything work for eleven years will improvise a solution for something that costs almost nothing, out of habit, and not notice he is doing it.

Now the limit, and I say it here rather than in a footer. The one place resourcefulness must never go is the dangerous category. Never a gas appliance, never the breaker panel, never mains wiring, never a wall holding the building up, never a roof. Call a licensed professional and pay them properly, and never improvise anything there however good you have got at improvising.

You are entirely right to refuse to be clever about the things that can kill, and drawing that line hard has never once been a waste of a skill. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a man peace about that boundary, and Scripture offers the renewing to the ones who have spent themselves rather than to the ones who never did.

One job, done the ordinary way

So here is the ask, and it is going to feel wasteful, which is exactly why it is the right one.

Do one job properly tonight, the ordinary way, with the right thing for the job.

Pick one of the forty. Something small. And instead of the clever solution, do it the plain way that anybody would do it, with whatever the actual correct item is, even if that means it costs a very small amount or means asking to borrow something.

You are able to do one thing the ordinary way, and choosing the plain solution once has never once been the same as wasting anything. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a man put down a habit for one evening, and Isaiah 40:31 promises renewing to somebody who has been walking a long way.

Here is what that one job does. It takes one thing out of your head permanently. The handle just works. Nobody has to be told anything. It does not need remembering, or explaining, or turning a particular way.

That is the actual relief, and it is much bigger than one handle.

And notice what it feels like afterward, because most men in this position are surprised. It does not feel like extravagance. It feels like putting something down.

You have permission to do one thing the easy way, and eleven years of being the clever one has never once obliged a man to be clever tonight. It is written in Isaiah that they who wait shall renew their strength, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in that hallway with you.