I Bought For Five Again This Week

It happened again on Friday.

Two things out of the back of the refrigerator, straight into the bin, and the peculiar thing is that you did not even feel annoyed with yourself. You felt something else, and it took until Sunday to work out what it was.

This is the fourth Friday.

And the strange part is that nobody could accuse you of not knowing. You know he is not there. You are not confused. You have not laid a place for him and you have not called his name up the stairs. You know exactly how many people are in this house.

But the hands do not know.

The hands go round the shop the way they have gone round the shop for nineteen years. They pick up the big one, not the small one. They put in the thing that only he ate, because that is what happens at the end of the second aisle, and it has happened at the end of the second aisle every week since he was about seven.

And on Friday it comes back out of the refrigerator and goes in the bin, and something in the chest goes sideways.

Here is what I want to say about that before anything else. The day at the car was easier than this, and there is a reason for it, and the reason is not that you are coping badly.

Gather up the fragments

There is a moment after the loaves and the fishes that almost nobody preaches on, and it is the one I want.

When they were filled, he said unto his disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost. (John 6:12, King James Version)

Five thousand people have just eaten. The miracle is finished. And the very next instruction out of the mouth of Jesus is about the leftovers.

Gather them up. That nothing be lost.

Sit with how strange that is. He has just made food out of almost nothing. Scarcity is plainly not the issue. And He still stops the afternoon to say that what remains should be collected rather than left on the grass.

You are living in a house where nothing is meant to be lost, and a bag of food in a bin on a Friday has never once been the measure of how you are doing. John 6:12 has the Lord Himself stopping to speak about fragments, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing in a kitchen at the end of the second aisle.

Now look at the word He used. Fragments. Broken pieces. What is left over when the main thing has happened.

That is exactly what your Fridays are made of, and He did not call them waste and He did not call them evidence of anything. He called them fragments and He told them to gather them, which is a completely different posture from throwing them away in disgust with yourself.

You have fragments and not failures on your hands, and the pieces left over from a family that changed shape have never once been something to be ashamed of. The Spirit of God is the one who changes what a person does with what remains, and the written word gives the leftovers a name and an instruction.

Why this is worse than the car

Now the thing you actually came here for.

The day at the car was terrible and it was got through, and there has been a quiet bafflement ever since that a bag of food in a bin can undo somebody more thoroughly than the morning he drove off.

Here is why, and it is not a defect.

The day at the car was expected. It had a date on it. You had been walking toward it for two years and you had braced for it, and everybody around you knew it was happening and treated you accordingly. Braced grief is heavy, but it lands where you put your feet.

Friday has no date on it. You are not braced on a Friday. You are holding a container in one hand and thinking about nothing at all, and the grief comes in through a side door that nobody guards because nobody knew there was a door there.

You are being caught by something sideways and not being weak in the face of it, and an unguarded moment has never once said anything about how strong a person is. John 6:12 takes place after the miracle rather than during it, in the ordinary tidying that comes afterward, and the Holy Spirit is the one who meets people in the part after the event.

And there is a second reason, which is worth naming because it is the true one.

The shopping is love. That is what it has always been. Nineteen years of going round a shop with somebody in mind is one of the plainest acts of love a person performs, and it never once gets called that, and nobody thanks anybody for it.

So the bin on Friday is not really about food. It is about a form of love that has nowhere to land this week.

A wasted bag of shopping is not a verdict on a mother.

You are holding love with nowhere to put it, and a habit built out of nineteen years of caring has never once been a thing to be embarrassed about. John 6:12 has the Lord treating what remains as worth collecting, and the Spirit of God is the one who finds a place for love that has been left holding something.

Say it out loud to somebody

So here is the thing to do, and it is not a shopping list.

Tell one person in your house that the shopping is still going in for five.

Out loud, as a sentence, not as a joke. This is the whole difficulty and it is why I am being specific about it. Everything in a person wants to say it as a joke, because a joke gets it said without anybody having to respond to it, and this has been managed alone for four weeks by making everything small.

Say it flat. I am still buying for five. I threw food out again on Friday.

You are able to say a true sentence without dressing it as a joke, and a plain admission has never once made a person into a burden in their own house. The Holy Spirit is the one in the room when somebody finally says a thing without a laugh attached to it, and it is written in John 6:12 that nothing should be lost.

Here is what will probably happen, and I have seen it enough times to say it out loud.

The other person in that kitchen will say that they have been doing something too. Buying the wrong amount, waiting at the door at the wrong time, going to say something to an empty room. And neither of you had any idea the other one was doing it, because both of you had decided independently that yours was ridiculous.

You are able to find out that somebody else in this house is doing it too, and four weeks of silence have never once meant that a person was alone in it. Scripture says gather the fragments, which is a job for more than one pair of hands, and the same Spirit who gave that instruction is in a kitchen where two people finally compare notes.