Two Things Are Broken And I Can Fix One

The washing machine and the back door. That is the choice this month.

One of them is going to get dealt with and the other one is going to wait, and both of them are real, and neither of them is a luxury or a whim.

And you have been going round this for eleven days, and the going round is costing more than the decision would.

Because it is not really a decision about money, is it. Somewhere in it there is a question about which one you are allowed to care about, and whether choosing the one that makes your life easier is selfish, and what it means about you that you cannot do both.

Let me put this down before anything else. Not knowing how is not a character flaw, and neither is having a month where two things break and there is enough for one. That is arithmetic. It is not a moral event and you are not on trial in it.

A handful of meal and a little oil

There is a moment in First Kings where a woman states her exact position without dressing it up.

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. (1 Kings 17:12, King James Version)

She counts it out. A handful. A little. She does not round it up to sound better and she does not round it down to sound worse.

And notice who she says it to. A prophet standing at her gate. She does not hide the number from him and she is not ashamed of it in front of him.

You have a woman in Scripture stating exactly what she has without embarrassment, and naming a small amount out loud has never once been a confession of failure. First Kings 17:12 has her count the handful and the little, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that read as dignity rather than as a story about scarcity.

And there is something else in that verse. She was in the middle of doing the arithmetic when he arrived. She had already worked out exactly what the meal and the oil would stretch to, and she was acting on it.

You are doing exactly what that woman was doing, and working out what a small amount will stretch to has never once been a smaller act than having plenty. The Spirit of God is the one who honors a woman counting carefully, and it is written in First Kings that she said the amount plainly to a man standing at her gate.

The going round is the expensive part

Here is what those eleven days have actually cost, and it is worth counting.

Not money. The decision costs the same amount whenever it is made. What eleven days have cost is eleven days of a background process running underneath everything else, in the car, at work, at three in the morning.

And the reason it has run for eleven days is that it is not being treated as arithmetic. It is being treated as a test with a right answer, and there is no right answer, so the process cannot terminate.

You have been running a decision that cannot finish because it was never a decision with a right answer, and an unfinished choice has never once been the same as an indecisive person. It is written in First Kings 17:12 that a woman counted out exactly what she had without shame, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets an ordinary calculation be ordinary again.

And here is the criterion nobody offers, which makes it finishable. Choose the one that costs more if it waits.

Not the one that matters most. Not the one that would be a treat. The one where waiting makes it worse or more expensive. That is a mechanical test, and it produces an answer, and it is not about anybody's character.

And if the answer is the one that also happens to make your life easier, that is not selfishness. That is a coincidence, and a coincidence is allowed.

Now the limit, and I say it here rather than in a footer. If one of the two is in the dangerous category, that one goes first regardless of everything else. 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 let the other thing wait however long it has to.

You are entirely right to put safety at the front of the list, and choosing the dangerous one first has never once needed to be justified to anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one who settles that order immediately, and Scripture has a woman name what she had and act inside it without apology.

Choose one out loud and date the other

So here is the ask, and both halves take about two minutes.

Choose one out loud tonight and say why, and write the other one on a list with a date.

Out loud, in the room. We are doing the back door, because if that waits it gets worse. Say the reason, because the reason is what makes it a decision rather than a preference.

You are able to end an eleven day process with one sentence said out loud, and a choice made on a mechanical criterion has never once been a colder choice than one agonized over. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a person stop going round something, and First Kings 17:12 has a woman say the amount plainly and get on with it.

Then the second half, which is the part that stops this being a loss. Write the other one on a list, with a month next to it.

Not fixed and not abandoned. Scheduled. Because what makes the unchosen one hurt is not that it is waiting. It is that it feels dropped, and a thing with a date on it is not dropped.

And then stop thinking about it. That is allowed. Both of them are handled now, one this month and one on a page, and there is nothing left for the background process to do.

You have permission to choose one and schedule the other and think about neither of them again tonight, and a date written on a list has never once been the same as giving up on something. It is written in First Kings that she counted what she had and did not hide it, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in that kitchen with you.