Everybody's Emergency Contact

He is written on four forms.

His mother's, at the care facility, which is fair and he would not want it otherwise. His brother's, at work, from a period eleven years ago that nobody has updated since. A neighbor's, which happened after a fall and was supposed to be temporary. And his daughter's college paperwork, which is the only one that feels like it belongs to him.

Three calls since Tuesday.

None of them was an emergency in the sense the box on the form means. The care facility wanted a signature. His brother wanted advice about a letter. The neighbor rang because a light had gone in her hall and she does not have a ladder, and he went, and he was glad to go, and it took forty minutes he did not have.

He is fifty two. He is good at all of it. If you asked any of those four people they would say, without hesitating, that he is the most reliable man they know.

Here is what he has never said.

There is no form anywhere with anybody's name on it for him. He noticed that in February, filling in a hospital pre admission questionnaire for a routine thing, at the box marked person to contact, and he sat with the pen over the paper for longer than a man should.

He put his daughter. Then he thought about what that would mean for her and he crossed it out and put his brother, and then he sat there some more.

The sentence, unsaid: I am on four of these and there is nobody on mine.

You may know that box. Everybody's number, and no number of your own.

Somebody said it to Moses first

There is a scene early in the wilderness where a man watches another man work and then tells him the truth, and it is one of the most useful conversations in the book.

Jethro arrives to visit his son in law and spends a day watching him. Moses sits from morning until evening judging the people, one after another, all of them coming to him, because he is the one they come to.

And Jethro, who loves him, does not admire it.

Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone.Exodus 18:18

Read the verbs. Wear away. Too heavy. Not able. That is not a rebuke and it is not flattery. It is a plain structural observation from somebody standing outside the arrangement, and Moses takes it.

You are being told the truth by somebody who is on your side, and Exodus 18:18 has a man who loves Moses name the arrangement as unsustainable without blaming him for a moment, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a conversation in a desert camp and lands it on a man with a pen over a form in February.

The load was never a compliment

Consider what Jethro does not say, because it is what everybody says to a man like this.

He does not say Moses is admirably strong. He does not say the people are lucky. He does not tell him to pace himself. He says, twice, in different words, that the arrangement is wrong, and then he restructures it.

And notice who else Jethro says will wear away. Both thou, and this people that is with thee. The setup is failing the four people on those forms as well, because a single point of contact is a single point of failure, and everybody depending on it is at risk in the same way he is.

You have been running an arrangement that is wearing out more than you, because the written word names both the man and the people as being worn down by the same structure, and the Holy Spirit is what turns that from an efficiency observation into permission to change something.

Then look at what the change actually is. Jethro does not remove Moses from the work. He stays. He keeps the hardest cases. What comes off him is the assumption that every single thing has to arrive at him first.

You were never meant to be the first stop for everything, and Exodus 18 keeps the man in the work while dismantling the funnel, and the same Spirit who is God's own supply for a worn out man is the one who fills.

Where the load is bigger than one person

I want to stop and say something plainly, because this site will not commend anybody for absorbing what one person cannot absorb.

Being the named contact for a parent in care, a sibling, a neighbor and a college student, at fifty two, with three calls since Tuesday, is more than one adult should be holding alone, and saying that is not a criticism of how he has held it. Tell a doctor what the last year has actually looked like, in plain words, including how tired he is, rather than waiting to be asked. Ask a social worker at the care facility what support exists for family contacts, because there is usually more than anybody offers. Ask about respite, which the people who most need it are reliably the last to say out loud. And ask one other adult to put their name on one of those four forms.

And if the tiredness has gone somewhere heavier than tiredness, or the thought of not being here has begun to feel restful rather than frightening, dial or text 988 in the United States, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, and talk to a person tonight.

Handing something over is not a reduction in love for anybody. You are held exactly as much on the day you hand something over as on the day you carry all four, because Exodus 18:18 has the restructuring proposed by somebody who loved the man, and it is His Spirit who makes that true in the body rather than only on paper.