I Missed One Shift And Then Another

The car stopped on a Wednesday and Tanya missed the Wednesday night shift.

That is one shift. That is a bad thing and it is a survivable thing and she has survived worse. The car went to a mechanic on the Thursday and came back on the Monday.

What happened next is the part that has stayed.

Her supervisor did the schedule on the Thursday. And Tanya, who did not know when the car would be back, said she was not sure about the following week, because she is honest and did not want to be put down for hours she might not be able to work.

And the following week she was not put down for hours.

Four shifts. Not as a punishment. Nobody was angry with her. It was simply that a person who says they are not sure gets scheduled by somebody who needs certainty, and somebody else said yes.

So one breakdown became five shifts, and the second four hurt more than the first one, because the first one was a car and the second four were a sentence she said herself.

And here is what has happened in Tanya since, and it is not about money, although the money is real.

She has started describing herself differently.

Not out loud. In the small internal way a person does. I'm unreliable at the moment. That phrase, or something near it, has been arriving about four times a day since the middle of September.

And it is doing damage that has nothing to do with the schedule, because a woman who thinks she is unreliable at the moment starts making decisions like one. She has not asked about the extra Saturday she would normally have asked about. She has not mentioned the training thing.

Her friend at work said last week, "You've gone quiet."

And Tanya said, "Just tired."

An event turned into a description

Let me put down what I am not doing, so nothing has to brace.

I am not going to promise you the hours come back. Nobody can say that and a woman told it and then handed another thin week is worse off than one who was never told.

And I am not going to suggest that praying about a schedule in a particular way fills it, because that is a lie about God and it lands hardest on the people who most need it not to be one.

One plain thing first. Losing hours takes some people somewhere much darker than a thin month. If it has gone there, if there are thoughts in it about not being here, tell a person today: a friend, a family member, a doctor, or the 988 crisis line for anyone in the United States. That is not a detour from this message. It is the most important line in it.

What I want to look at is the four times a day.

You have a name that was given rather than earned, and Scripture says God calls His people by it before it says one word about their circumstances. Isaiah 43 opens with fear not, for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name, thou art mine, which settles the identity before any water is mentioned, and the Holy Spirit is what makes a phrase arriving four times a day answerable to that.

Here is the verse, and it is one of the most quoted and one of the least carefully read.

And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten.Joel 2:25

Now, most of the weight in most sermons goes on restore, and that is understandable, and I am going to leave it where it is because I cannot tell you what God is going to do about a schedule and I will not pretend to.

I want the other half. The years that the locust hath eaten.

Because look at what that phrase does before any restoring is mentioned.

It names the loss as a loss.

God does not say: those years were not really eaten. He does not say: you should have farmed better. He does not suggest that a competent nation would have had a locust plan.

He calls the eaten years eaten. He puts the loss in the record as something that happened, done by locusts, to people who were standing there.

That is an enormous thing to have on the page, because the natural instinct of anybody who has lost something is to find the part of it that was their fault, and God, in this verse, in the middle of a promise, does not do that.

You are not unreliable, and Scripture names a loss as a loss without turning it into a verdict on the people who suffered it. It is written that He will restore the years that the locust hath eaten, which calls the eaten years eaten and blames nobody standing in the field, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a fact about a Wednesday in September.

You have had something taken rather than something revealed, and the passage puts the locust in the sentence rather than the farmer. Joel 2 assigns the eating to the locust by name, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that assignment stick when a phrase is arriving four times a day.

Say what happened, using no words about yourself

Here is the practical thing, and it is one sentence with a rule attached.

Say out loud what happened and what it cost, and do it using no words that describe you.

The car broke down on a Wednesday. I missed one shift, and then I said I was not sure about the next week, and I lost four more.

Read that back. There is not one adjective about a person in it. It is a car, a Wednesday, a sentence, and five shifts.

Now here is the version that has been running four times a day since September: I'm unreliable at the moment.

Same event. Completely different object. The first is a thing that happened. The second is a thing she is.

And the second one is the expensive one, because a thing that happened is over and a thing you are keeps making decisions for you. It is why the extra Saturday did not get asked about. It is why the training thing did not get mentioned.

You have permission to keep this as an event, and no verse anywhere converts a person's losses into a description of them. Joel 2 puts the eating on the locust and leaves the people as people, and the Spirit of God is what makes one carefully worded sentence a real act of agreement with that.

And I want to say something about the Thursday, because that is the moment she keeps going back to.

She told the truth. She did not know when the car would be back, and she said so, and that is what an honest person does when a schedule is being made.

Saying yes, put me down and then not turning up would have cost her far more, and she knew that, and she chose accuracy over hours in about four seconds while worried.

That is not unreliability. That is the opposite of it, and it got punished by the ordinary mechanics of a schedule rather than by anybody deciding anything about her.

You were being honest at cost, and Scripture never once treats a truthful answer that went badly as a fault in the one who gave it. It is written that the righteous sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not, which is Psalm 15 describing exactly a person who keeps their word when it costs them, and His Spirit is what makes that a commendation rather than a consolation.