Carrying People Who Do Not Know

Keola carries four people, and not one of them knows they are being carried, and he could not tell them without it stopping.

That last part is the whole problem and it is worth stating carefully.

The carrying is not dramatic. It is not money or crisis management. It is that four people in his life are, in a way none of them would recognize, held up by his attention: he tracks how they are, he notices when something has shifted, he arranges without appearing to arrange, and he arrives at the right moment often enough that two of them think of themselves as lucky.

If any one of them found out, it would change into a different thing immediately. They would feel managed, or indebted, or embarrassed. And the version of it that works is precisely the version they do not see.

So it cannot be shared with the people it is for. That is not a complaint; it is a structural feature.

And it produces a specific tiredness that Keola has never found a name for, and which is not the tiredness of the effort.

It is the tiredness of being the only one who knows.

He noticed it at the end of a long good day on the sand, with a child asleep against him and everybody happy, and what arrived was not a hard thought. It was one plain question that he has not been able to unask.

Who is doing this for me?

Not bitterly. He is not a man who keeps score, and if you offered him relief he would be uncomfortable and would probably decline it.

He simply, at fifty-one, at the end of a good day, wanted to know the answer.

You have your own version. There are people you hold in a way they do not see, and you cannot tell them, and the not-being-able is doing something to you that has never had a name.

The one who carries is himself being led

There is a verse in Isaiah that is usually read as a picture of God's tenderness, and it is, and there is a detail in the last clause that is for shepherds specifically.

He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.Isaiah 40:11

Three actions, and the third is the one nobody quotes.

Gently lead those that are with young.

The ones with young are the ones doing the carrying. They are not the lambs; they are the ewes, and they are the reason the flock moves slowly, and a shepherd who does not account for them will damage them without meaning to.

And the promise for them is not that somebody will carry them. It is that they will be led gently, at a pace that takes their load into account.

That is a remarkably precise word for a man on a beach who cannot be carried, because being carried would end the thing he is doing, and who does not actually want to be.

He does not need relief. He needs the pace to be set by somebody who knows what he is carrying.

And He knows what you are carrying and sets the pace accordingly. That is not my sentiment: the written word distinguishes the lambs who are carried from the ones with young who are gently led, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my paragraph who makes that land in a man at the end of a long day.

And you are not unseen in this. The word calls Him the God who sees, and the seeing is His, and the Spirit bears witness with your spirit, which is an answer to who is doing this for me that does not require anybody in your life to find out.

The specific tiredness, named

Here is the part that matters, because a thing without a name cannot be brought to anybody, including to God, with any precision.

It is not the effort. Keola could do more.

It is the asymmetry. Every relationship he has with those four has a piece in it that only exists on his side, and a piece that exists on only one side is, by definition, unshared, and unshared things get heavy in a way that shared heavy things do not.

That is why the day itself was good and the tiredness still arrived at the end of it. Nothing in that day was hard. The asymmetry does not go away when things are going well; it is not caused by difficulty.

And that specific weight is one He carries too. The word says He knoweth our frame, He remembereth that we are dust, and the remembering is of a maker about the thing he made, and the Spirit is the one who makes that a real understanding rather than a general kindness.

And you are permitted to say it plainly. The word has a prophet saying I, even I only, am left, and it is not accurate and he is not corrected before he is fed, and the Spirit is the one who lets a man say an unfair sentence out loud without having to soften it first.

Nobody is telling you to tell them

I want that clear, because it is the obvious suggestion and it would be wrong.

Do not tell the four. You are right about what would happen, and a message written by somebody who has never met them should not be the reason a thing that has worked for years gets broken.

And do not go looking for somebody to do it for you, as a project. That rarely works, and a man who goes hunting for reciprocity usually finds something that looks like it and is not.

What is available is the naming, and one other thing: there is very often one person, not among the four, who could be told that the carrying exists, without being told any details. Not to receive it. Just to know it is there.

That is not for tonight. But it is worth knowing that the asymmetry does not have to be total, and that the alternative to telling the four is not silence everywhere.

And you are not alone in the knowing. The word says all things are naked and open unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do, and the Spirit is the one who makes that a company rather than an exposure to a man who has been the only one who knows for years.