Everything Counted But Me

You add up everything except yourself.

You do it properly too. The fabric, the thread, the postage, the little fittings, the replacement blade, the portion of the electricity you think is fair. You are not careless and you are not vague. You know exactly what goes into a thing.

And then the eleven hours you spent on it do not appear anywhere in the sum. Not at a lower figure. Not at all. There is no line for them.

If somebody else had done those eleven hours you would have paid them without a second thought, and you would have felt bad if you had paid them badly. It is only your own hours that are free, and they are free every single time.

I am not going to tell you what your time is worth, because that would be a method and this site does not have those. I am going to talk about a sum with a line missing.

The man who sat down and counted

There is a picture Jesus gives about a man building a tower, and the striking thing in it is how ordinary the activity is.

He is making a point about following Him, and the illustration He reaches for is a person doing arithmetic before starting work.

For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? (Luke 14:28, King James Version)

You are meant to count the whole cost, and leaving yourself out has never once been humility. Luke 14:28 has a man sit down and count what a thing will actually take before he builds it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to a kitchen table with a calculator on it.

Notice that the counting is assumed. Jesus says which of you would not do this, as though it were obvious, as though everybody counts.

And notice what is counted. The cost, whether he has enough to finish. Not a portion of the cost. Not the materials and never mind the rest. What it will actually take, so the tower gets finished rather than abandoned half built.

You have a full sum available to you, and a complete count has never once been greed. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a parable about a building project reach a woman with a notebook open in front of her, and Luke 14:28 treats a complete and honest reckoning as the plainly sensible thing.

What a missing line does

Let me say what happens when your own hours are worth nothing in your own sum, because it is not only about money.

It makes the work look easier than it is. Every piece you make appears, on paper, to have cost almost nothing, because the hardest and longest part of it was entered as zero. And then you compare yourself to what things cost elsewhere and cannot understand how anybody manages.

You were comparing a sum with a line missing, and it has never once been the same sum. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman what a blank line has been doing to her own arithmetic, and the written word assumes a complete count in Luke 14:28 as the obvious thing to do.

And there is a second thing, and it is the one that will sting. You have been telling yourself you do not know whether this is worth doing. You have said that out loud, more than once, in this kitchen. But you have never actually run the sum with yourself in it, so the thing you think you do not know is a thing you have not yet looked at.

That is not a failing. It is a line on a page.

You have never once had the evidence you thought you were lacking, because it has not been written down yet. His Spirit is the one who makes a woman able to look at her own figures without flinching, and Luke 14:28 has the counting done sitting down, deliberately, before anything else.

Put the line in

So here is the exercise, and it is not a price and it is not a decision.

Write down the hours. The last job, the real number of hours, including the two you spent unpicking the thing you got wrong, and the trip out for the missing part.

You are able to write down what it actually took, and writing it has never once been a complaint. Luke 14:28 has a man sit down and count before he builds, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an honest total possible for a woman whose own time has been entered as nothing for years.

Do not decide anything. Do not work out a price from it. Do not turn it into a plan. Just write the number of hours and leave the piece of paper somewhere you will see it tomorrow.

You will want to round it down. Everybody does. Write the true one, including the hour you spent looking for the right thread.

You were never required to leave yourself out to be good, and you are not required to now. The Spirit of God carries an honest figure past the instinct to discount oneself, and the written word assumes a full and sober count in Luke 14:28 rather than a hopeful one.