The Kids Think It Is Camping

They have named it.

That is what has happened. Somewhere in the second week the children started calling it camping, and now the bowls on the floor and the washing in the tub and the whole arrangement has a name and a set of jokes attached to it, and there is a routine where the youngest does a voice.

And it is genuinely funny. That is not sarcasm. They have taken a difficult stretch in a household and made it into something, which is one of the more remarkable things children do.

And you are standing at the counter laughing at the voice and you are so tired that you can feel it behind your eyes.

And here is the thing that nobody talks about: you cannot say so.

Not to them, obviously, and that is right. But also, somehow, not to anybody. Because the house is happy. Because to say that you are exhausted while everybody else is having fun would be to put something on the table that would change the room, and the room is good at the moment, and the goodness of the room feels like something you are responsible for keeping.

You are allowed to be worn out in a house that is having fun and not required to match it, and a mother tired in a happy kitchen has never once been a mother spoiling anything.

A time to weep, and a time to laugh

There is a famous passage of opposites, and the useful thing about it is how the opposites are arranged.

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance. (Ecclesiastes 3:4, King James Version)

They are side by side. Not ranked. Not one of them presented as the correct condition and the other as a failure to reach it. Weeping and laughing sit in the same verse with a semicolon between them and nothing else.

You are inside a verse that puts the two of them side by side, and a woman worn out in a laughing kitchen has never once been in the wrong one of the two. The Holy Spirit is the one present at a counter with somebody laughing and tired at the same time, and Ecclesiastes 3:4 lists them without ranking them.

Now here is what that passage does not say, and it is the thing being quietly assumed in that kitchen.

It does not say everybody in a room is in the same time. It says there is a time for each of these, and it never once requires a household to be synchronized.

Which means the children can be in the time to laugh, genuinely and rightly, and the woman at the counter can be in a different time, at the same hour, in the same room, and nothing has gone wrong in that house.

You are permitted to be in a different time from your own children, and two people in one kitchen have never once been required by Scripture to be in the same season. The written word lists the times without synchronizing the people, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds both of them in the same room without conflict.

And there is one more thing, which is the word time itself.

A time. Not a mood, not an attitude, not a decision about outlook. A time is something you are in rather than something you chose, and it passes on its own schedule and not by effort.

You are in something rather than doing something wrong, and a stretch of being worn through has never once been a failure of attitude that could be corrected by trying. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present in the one you are actually in, and Ecclesiastes 3:4 calls it a time, which is a season and not a choice.

The rule you did not agree to

Something practical, and it is about a rule that got made without a vote.

The rule is: if the children are happy, the adult may not be tired out loud.

Nobody stated it. It assembled itself out of good instincts, which is what makes it so hard to see. Protecting their fun is a real and decent motive, and the rule wears that motive like a coat.

But look at what the rule actually requires, which is that one person in the house has to hold a true thing permanently unsaid in order for everybody else to keep enjoying themselves.

You have been keeping something unsaid to protect a room, and a true thing held in for three weeks has never once been the price of a happy household. The written word sets weeping and laughing beside each other without either one having to be concealed, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a woman put a true thing down.

Now the distinction that makes this doable, because it matters.

The children do not need the true version. That is correct, and nothing here is asking you to hand a nine year old a report on how tired their mother is.

An adult does. One adult, outside the room, who is not going to be affected the way the children would be.

You are able to tell one adult the truth without spending it on a child, and a sentence said to the right person has never once been a sentence that damaged anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one who puts the right person in front of a woman who needs to say it, and Ecclesiastes 3:4 allows both times to exist at once.

And the sentence itself has one rule: no fine at the end.

I am exhausted. Full stop. Not I am exhausted but it is fine, which is the version that gets said and which cancels itself in the second half and leaves the sayer with nothing.