I Spent the Day in Somebody Else's Kitchen

Tonight we are making buttered noodles with frozen peas and cheese, and it is done in the time it takes the water to boil and the noodles to cook.

Here is the whole method in one paragraph. Put a pot of water on and salt it well. Cook whatever pasta shape is in the house. Two minutes before it is done, tip a big handful of frozen peas straight into the same pot, which saves a pan and cooks them exactly right. Drain it, keeping a mug of the water. Put the pot back on the heat off, add a good lump of butter, a splash of the cooking water and a big handful of grated cheese, and stir it hard until it turns glossy and coats every piece. Black pepper. That is dinner. It feeds four, it costs almost nothing, and it takes one pot and about eleven minutes.

Now, the reason I am writing is not the noodles.

It is that somebody reading this has already cooked today.

You spent the day in another person's house. Somebody who is ill, or old, or both. You made their breakfast and you did their dishes and you found the thing they could not find and you kept your voice steady for nine hours. You cooked in a kitchen that is not yours, using a pan you do not like, and you did it well.

And now you are standing in your own kitchen, and there is nothing left in you for this room, and this room is the one that is actually yours.

The verse that names the tiredness first

There is a line of Paul's that everybody quotes at the encouraging half and skips at the honest half.

And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. (Galatians 6:9, King James Version)

Read the first half slowly. He assumes it. He does not say if you get weary, or those of you who are weary. He writes to people who are doing good and are tired from doing it, because that is what doing good does to a body, and he does not treat that as a spiritual failure at any point.

The whole verse only makes sense if the tiredness is real and expected. And the harvest he names is in a due season, which is to say not tonight, which means he is not asking you to feel better by dinner.

You are exactly the person that verse was written to, and God has never once mistaken the tiredness of doing good for the tiredness of doing wrong. Galatians 6:9 assumes weariness in well doing rather than scolding it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that distinction land on somebody standing in their own kitchen at six.

You have not run out because something is wrong with you, and heaven has never once been surprised by an emptied caregiver. It is written that we shall reap in due season if we faint not, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is in the room where the water is coming up to a boil.

Nothing came home with you

Now let me name the specific shape of this tiredness, because it is not ordinary tiredness and it deserves to be said properly.

Most work leaves something behind that a person can look at. This does not. A day of caring produces no object. The dishes are done and will be dirty tomorrow. The medicine is taken and will need taking again. The room is tidy and nobody will remember it. There is nothing on the counter at the end of it that proves the day happened.

And so a person comes home feeling like they did nothing, while being completely unable to do anything, which is a very strange and lonely combination.

A day that leaves no object behind is not a day that produced nothing. It is a day whose product was a person's comfort, and that is not the kind of thing that sits on a counter.

You have done something enormous today, and the fact that it left no evidence has never once made it smaller. The passage puts well doing and weariness in the same clause on purpose, and the Spirit of God is the one who counts what a day contained when nobody in the house can see it.

You have been the reason somebody got through today, and that has never been a small thing to have been. Galatians 6 promises a season rather than an outcome, and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds a person steady in the meantime.

Eleven minutes, and one bowl for you

Here is the practical part, and there are two halves to it, and the second half is the one I actually care about.

The first half is the noodles. One pot, peas in with the pasta, butter and cheese and a splash of the water off the heat. Eleven minutes and no skill required and nothing to think about, which is the entire specification tonight.

The second half is this. Make a full bowl for yourself and sit down and eat it. Not the end of the pot. Not standing at the counter picking at it while you put things away. A proper bowl, at the table, at the same time as everybody else.

Because here is what happens to people who care for the ill. They get very good at feeding others and they slowly stop counting themselves as one of the people in the house who eats.

You are one of the people in this house, and God has never once left the caregiver off the list of who gets fed. Galatians 6:9 is written to the ones doing the good rather than to the ones receiving it, and the Spirit of God is the one who puts a full bowl in front of the person who has been serving all day.