I Stop When It Stops Being Fun

You have never had to do this before.

That is the piece of information that changes the whole of this, and almost nobody has it.

Everything you have finished in your life, you finished because you wanted to. School work that interested you. Work you were good at. The things you took up and stayed with. All of them ran on enjoyment, and enjoyment is a superb engine, and it got you a long way.

Which means you have arrived at forty or fifty years old having never once developed the other thing. The thing that carries a person through a stretch they are not enjoying.

And that is not a defect. It is an absence, and there is a very large difference between the two, and nobody has ever said it to you.

A defect is something wrong that has to be repaired. An absence is something that was never installed because it was never needed, and it can be picked up now, in small amounts, starting tonight.

You are a woman who has never needed this before, and stopping when it stops being fun has never once been a defect in anybody.

Run with patience

There is an instruction in Hebrews about running, and the word attached to it is not the word people expect.

Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. (Hebrews 12:1, King James Version)

Run with patience.

That is a strange pairing on purpose. Running is about speed and effort and urgency. Patience is about endurance across time, which is almost the opposite quality.

And the instruction joins them, which tells you what kind of race this is. Not a sprint that enthusiasm can carry. A long one, where the carrying has to come from somewhere other than how anybody feels about it.

You have an instruction that names patience as the carrying force, and enthusiasm has never once been what the word expected to get anybody through a long thing. Hebrews 12:1 pairs running with patience deliberately, and the Holy Spirit is the one who supplies the second one rather than expecting it to be there already.

And notice what comes first in the verse. Let us lay aside every weight.

Weight there is not sin. Sin is named separately in the same sentence. Weight is anything that makes the running heavier, including things that are not wrong in themselves.

You were told to set down weight before anything was said about running, and a load that is not a fault has never once been a load you were meant to carry anyway. The Spirit of God is the one who names weights separately from faults, and Hebrews 12:1 keeps them in two different clauses on purpose.

An absence is not a fault

So here is the practical claim, and the distinction in it is the whole of the help.

There are two engines available to anybody doing long work. One runs on interest and the other runs on something duller, and most people have both because most people have been forced into the second one at some point.

You have one, and it is an excellent one, and it has never let you down on anything that stayed interesting.

You have an engine that has carried you for forty years, and the fact that it runs on interest has never once made it a lesser engine. Hebrews 12:1 names patience as a thing to run with rather than as a virtue a person has, and the Holy Spirit is the one who provides what is not already there.

And here is what the missing one actually is, because it is smaller than it sounds.

It is not grit and it is not discipline in the heroic sense. It is the practiced experience of having worked for ten minutes past the point where you wanted to stop, and found out that nothing bad happened, and then done it again.

That is the whole of it. It is built out of small instances rather than out of resolve, and it has never been available to a person who has never had one instance of it.

You have never had one instance of it, and never having practiced a thing has never once been the same as being unable to do it. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in the first ten minutes past the wanting, and the written word asks for patience in the running rather than assuming anybody arrived with it.

And one more, because the shame in this row is entirely misplaced.

You were never being compared with people who had to learn this at twelve, and an engine nobody ever needed has never once been an engine anybody failed to build. Hebrews 12:1 speaks about a race set before us rather than about who arrived best equipped, and the Holy Spirit is the one who supplies patience to somebody who has never once had to use any.

Ten minutes past the moment

Here is the assignment and it is precisely designed.

Work for ten minutes past the moment you would normally stop.

Not an hour past. Not until it is done. Ten minutes past the moment you notice that you want to stop.

You have ten minutes past the wanting available tonight, and working past a moment has never once required anybody to enjoy the ten minutes. Hebrews 12:1 pairs the running with patience, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that room for the ten minutes after the interest has gone.

You will know the moment. It is unmistakable, and it usually arrives with a very reasonable thought attached to it about what else needs doing.

When it comes, set a timer for ten and carry on.

And then stop at ten. Do not push on to twenty because it is going well, and do not carry on until the job is done because you feel virtuous. The whole exercise is the ten minutes and the deliberate stop at the end of it.

Here is what it is for. It is one instance. It is the first entry in an account that has never had anything in it. And the account is built out of instances rather than out of intentions, which is why tonight is worth more than any amount of deciding to be different.