Two Bags And The Bus Home

The machine at home has been dead since March, and it is not the washing that is hard, and it is not even the waiting.

It is the walk to the stop with two bags.

Specifically the second half of it, the part after the corner, where the handles have started to cut and the weight has gone from awkward to genuinely heavy and there is still a distance to go and no good way to put them down.

And then the bus, with the bags between your feet, and the getting off, and the same walk again at the other end with wet weight instead of dry weight, which is a different and worse job.

That is the actual shape of Saturday. Four hours, most of which is fine, and about eighteen minutes of it that are hard in a way that is difficult to describe to somebody with a car.

And there is something else in it, and it is the part nobody mentions.

It is the being seen. Carrying laundry through a town on a Saturday morning is a visible activity, and there is a particular feeling that comes with passing people you know while doing it.

You are a man carrying two bags across a town and not a man who has come down in the world, and a bus ride with laundry on your knees has never once been a report on the life you are living.

He giveth power to the faint

There is a verse in Isaiah about strength, and it is very specific about who gets it.

He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. (Isaiah 40:29, King James Version)

To the faint. To them that have no might.

Not to the ones who are holding on well. Not to the strong who need a little extra. The recipients named in that verse are people who have run out, and the running out is the qualification rather than the disqualification.

You are the exact person that verse hands something to, and a man who has run out halfway to a bus stop has never once been outside the category it names. Isaiah 40:29 gives power to the faint by name, and the Holy Spirit is the one present on a sidewalk with two bags and a corner still to come.

And notice the verbs, because both of them are ongoing.

He giveth. He increaseth. Not He gave, once, at some point in the past, to people who then had it. Present tense, continuous, describing something that is happening rather than something that happened.

You are inside something that is being given now and not remembering something that was given, and strength described in the present tense has never once run out before the week did. The written word uses continuous verbs on purpose, and the Spirit of God is the one supplying while a man is actually walking.

And there is one more thing worth having on that walk.

The verse says nothing about how the faintness happened. It does not distinguish between people who got tired for good reasons and people who got tired for bad ones. It does not ask how a man came to have no might.

You are not being assessed on the way to the bus stop, and a man with nothing left has never once been asked by that verse to account for how he got that way. Isaiah 40:29 names the condition and supplies it without inquiry, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does not ask a man why he is tired before helping him.

Two changes that make Saturday smaller

Something practical, and it is two small adjustments rather than a plan.

The first: go on a Tuesday.

Saturday is the hardest day for this and it is chosen out of habit rather than necessity. Saturday is when the place is full, when the wait is longest, and when the town is busiest, which is when the walk is most visible.

A Tuesday morning laundromat is a different building entirely. Three people in it, all of them doing the same thing, none of them looking at anybody.

You are allowed to change a day that nobody chose for you, and a load done on a Tuesday has never once been a load done at the wrong time. The written word supplies strength without stipulating the schedule, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present on an ordinary weekday morning.

The second: take one bag rather than two.

Two bags is the attempt to do the whole week at once, and it is what makes the walk what it is. One bag is not half a job. One bag is a job that a man can carry the whole way without stopping, twice a week, at a total cost of less effort than the one trip.

The instinct against this is real and worth naming: two trips feels like twice the humiliation. But two trips with a bag that can be carried is easier than one trip with a weight that cannot.

You are able to do this in a way that your arms can actually carry, and a smaller load taken more often has never once been a lesser way of doing a thing. Isaiah 40:29 gives strength to the one who has none rather than asking him to manufacture it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who prompts a man to change a routine that was hurting him.

And on the being seen: the people you pass are not reading your life. They are thinking about their own Saturday. That is not a comfort, it is an observation about human attention, and it happens to be true.