I Decided Not To Make It

You decided.

Not this year. A while ago, quietly, without telling anybody, standing in a kitchen with the card in your hand and a clear sense that you were not going to do this.

And it was a relief. That is the part that has been sitting badly ever since.

Because a daughter is supposed to want to make her mother's food. That is the story everybody knows. And you took the card out, and you looked at it, and what arrived was not longing, it was a very calm certainty that this particular thing was hers and is finished, and then relief.

And since then you have been half expecting somebody to find out. You have a small explanation ready in case it comes up at a family gathering, and you have never had to use it, and having it ready is its own kind of weight.

So let me say the first thing plainly, and this is the whole of the article rather than the opening of it.

Your decision is a good one and it needs no defense.

There is no version of grief in which a person owes a dish to somebody who died. Nothing in this article is going to try to change your mind, and nothing here is going to suggest that you might feel differently in a year, and nobody here thinks the relief you felt was a problem.

Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind

There is a line in Romans about a disagreement over food and days, and the way it lands is remarkable.

One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. (Romans 14:5, King James Version)

Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.

Two people do opposite things and neither is corrected. The chapter is entirely about food and observances, and the apostle who is perfectly willing to correct people about a great many things declines to correct anybody here.

And the standard given is not consensus. It is being fully persuaded in your own mind, which is exactly what happened to you standing in that kitchen.

You are being asked for your own settled mind rather than for the family's agreement, and a decision made quietly and certainly has never once needed anybody else's signature. Romans 14:5 leaves two opposite practices standing and corrects neither, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman who has an explanation ready and has never used it.

And notice the word fully.

Not tentatively. Not provisionally, pending review. Fully persuaded, which is a description of the calm certainty that arrived in that kitchen and got treated as suspicious.

The thing you felt in that kitchen has a name in Scripture and the name is not selfishness.

You have a settled mind rather than a lapse, and a certainty that arrived quietly has never once been the same thing as not caring. The Spirit of God is the one with somebody who has been half waiting to be found out, and Romans 14:5 makes being fully persuaded the actual standard.

The relief was information

Here is the second part, and it is about what that relief actually was.

The relief has been read as evidence against you. A daughter who feels relief at not cooking her mother's food must be missing something, or must not have loved her enough, and that reading has been running quietly for however long it has been.

Here is another reading. The relief was the sound of a weight coming off, and weights come off when they were never yours in the first place. Nobody put that dish on you. You put it on yourself, along with a great many other things, in the months after she died, when everybody does.

Relief at a weight coming off is not a report on how much you loved her. It is a report on how heavy the weight was.

You were feeling a weight leave rather than a love fail, and relief at putting something down has never once been a measurement of what somebody meant to you. Romans 14:5 makes the settled mind the standard and requires no explanation of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman who has been treating her own calm as evidence.

And here is the thing about the explanation you have ready. It is not needed, and keeping it ready is what is holding this open.

An explanation is for a charge, and no charge has been made. Nobody in that family has asked. The trial you have been preparing for is one you convened yourself, and it has been in session for months.

You have no charge to answer, and an explanation kept ready has never once been the same thing as a thing that needed explaining. The Spirit of God is the one in that kitchen with a woman who can stand down, and Romans 14:5 declines to put anybody on trial over food.

What this week is, and it is small

So here is the assignment, and it is smaller than any other one on this site. Say your decision out loud once, put the card somewhere it is kept rather than hidden, and let it be finished.

Out loud once. To one person, or to nobody at all in that kitchen. Say the sentence in your own voice: I am not going to make this, and that is all right. It has been a private thought for months, and private thoughts keep needing to be thought again, and a thing said out loud once tends to stay said.

You are saying it once rather than thinking it again every month, and a decision spoken out loud has never once needed to be made a second time. Romans 14:5 asks only for a mind that is fully persuaded, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that kitchen with a woman saying a sentence to nobody.

Then the second half, which is the one that does the work. Take that card out of the drawer it is hidden in and put it somewhere it is kept. In a book, in a frame, in the box with the photographs, anywhere that a thing goes when it is being looked after rather than avoided. The card is not the problem and it never was. It is a piece of her handwriting, and it deserves the treatment a piece of her handwriting gets, and that is different from the treatment an unfinished job gets.

You are keeping her handwriting rather than storing an unfinished job, and a card moved into the light has never once been the same object as one shut in a drawer. The Spirit of God is the one at that drawer with a card going somewhere better, and Romans 14:5 lets two opposite practices stand side by side without ranking them.