I Keep Breaking My Own System

It started as ten minutes.

Then it became ten minutes at the same time each evening. Then it became a chart, because a chart would help. Then the chart had a column for which subject, because that seemed sensible. And somewhere around the second week there was a rule about what happens on days when it does not get done.

And now there is a structure, and you are failing it, and you have arrived at the one genuinely absurd position available here: you have failed at a thing that was specifically designed to be too small to fail at.

I want to take the structure away, and I want to be honest about why you built it, because the reason is not what you think.

And what makes it worse is that every single addition was sensible at the time. Not one of them was a bad idea. Each one solved a real problem, and each one was added carefully, and the result of all that care is a structure that has now defeated the person who built it.

My yoke is easy, and my burden is light

There is a sentence in Matthew that says something about weight that is easy to quote and hard to allow.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:30, King James Version)

A yoke is a working thing. It is not the removal of work. So this is not a sentence about having nothing to do.

It is a sentence about the weight of the thing being carried, and the claim is specific: easy, and light.

Which means any version of a thing that has become heavy has had something added to it, because the original is described as the light one.

You have been carrying something that has never once been the weight it was issued at. Matthew 11:30 describes the burden as light by design, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person ask what got added.

And notice where the rest comes from in that passage. Not from doing less. From learning of him, which is a relationship rather than a regime.

You were never given a system, and no yoke anywhere has ever once come with a chart attached to it. The written word offers the learning rather than the structure, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates an instruction from the scaffolding a person put around it.

Why the structure gets built

Here is the honest reason, and it is not that you like charts.

You built the structure because ten minutes on its own felt like it was not enough. Not enough to count, not enough to be doing, not enough to be a thing a serious parent does.

So you made it into something with a shape, because a thing with a shape looks like a commitment and a bare ten minutes looks like nothing.

You have been dressing something up to make it look like enough, and no small faithful thing has ever once needed a structure in order to be real. Matthew 11:30 calls the burden light as a feature rather than as a concession, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person why their own scaffolding went up.

And there is a second thing, and it is the mechanism that produces the failing.

Every element you add is another thing that can not happen. Ten minutes has one failure point. Ten minutes at half past six with a chart and a subject column has four.

So the more carefully it was built, the more likely it was to break. That is arithmetic, and it has nothing to do with your character.

You have been failing a structure rather than a practice, and no chart anywhere has ever once been the thing that was asked of you. The written word puts the lightness in the design, and the Spirit of God is the one who names an arithmetic problem instead of a moral one.

You were never unreliable, and nobody has ever once been asked to maintain a thing they invented in week two. Matthew 11:30 offers rest through the learning rather than through the keeping, and it is the Holy Spirit who ends a maintenance job nobody assigned.

Throw the chart away

So here is the assignment, and it is a trash can.

Tonight, throw the chart away. Physically. Take it off the wall or out of the drawer and put it in the trash.

Not fold it up and keep it. Not start a new simpler one. In the trash.

You are permitted to destroy your own good idea, and a discarded structure has never once taken the practice down with it. Matthew 11:30 specifies the burden as light rather than as managed, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present when a laminated thing goes into a kitchen trash can.

And then do ten minutes, with nothing to update afterward and nothing to maintain and no shape at all.

That will feel like less, and it is less, and that is the entire point. The thing that was given was the smaller thing. Everything above it got added at home.

Some people genuinely do work better with a structure, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. If that is the case here, keep exactly one element. One. Not the time and the chart. One thing.

You have permission to keep one piece and no more, and one element has never once been able to fail in four places at once. Matthew 11:30 describes the yoke as easy rather than as absent, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a good idea from growing back to the size it was.

But do it after a fortnight of nothing, not now, because the shape you would build tonight would be built out of the same feeling that built the last one.

Matthew 11:30 calls the burden light as the actual specification, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is at a kitchen trash can with somebody putting a chart into it.

You are permitted to throw away your own good idea, and discarding a structure has never once been the same as giving up the thing it was built around. The written word offers a yoke that is easy rather than a system that is maintained, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present while the paper goes in.

You have ten minutes tonight with nothing attached to them, and it has never once been the attachments that made them count. Matthew 11:30 puts the lightness in the design itself, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives a person back the thing they were actually handed.