I Threw It In Again

You agreed the job, and then you did about a third more than the job, and nobody asked you to.

They asked for the one thing. You did the one thing and then you also did the other bit, because you were there anyway, because it only took twenty minutes, because it looked unfinished without it, because you wanted them to be really pleased.

And you did not charge for any of it. You did not even mention it. In some cases you actively hid it, in case they felt they ought to offer.

So the price you agreed has not been the real price of anything you have done for about eight months, and you are the only person who knows that, and you are also the person who decided it.

I am not going to tell you to stop being generous. Generosity is not the problem and I am not going to turn you into a woman who counts minutes. I am going to talk about the gap between what was agreed and what happened.

Let your yes be yes

There is a short instruction from Jesus about speech, and it is usually quoted at people who swear oaths. Read it as being about agreements, because that is what it is about.

He is talking about not needing to swear by heaven or earth to make your word reliable, and then He gives the alternative, which is almost absurdly simple.

But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. (Matthew 5:37, King James Version)

You are allowed a yes that means exactly what it says, and that has never once been mean. Matthew 5:37 sets a plain yes and a plain no down as the whole of what is needed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to a kitchen table with piping bags on it.

Look at what a plain yes actually is. It is a thing with edges. Yes to this, and that is what yes covered. The edges are what make it reliable.

A yes that keeps growing is not a better yes. It is a yes nobody can plan around, including the person who said it, and Jesus puts plainness where most people would put enthusiasm.

You have a yes with edges on it, and the edges have never once made you less kind. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a short saying about oaths land on a woman who has been throwing extras in for eight months, and Matthew 5:37 treats a plain yes as sufficient rather than as stingy.

What the extra is buying

Let me say what the extra thing is for, because it is not generosity, or not only.

It is insurance against disappointment. While you have given them more than they paid for, nobody can be dissatisfied, and you never have to find out whether the agreed thing, done well, would have been enough on its own.

You were insuring yourself against a complaint that has not arrived, and you have never once needed to. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman what her own extras have been buying, and the written word puts a plain yes and a plain no down as enough in Matthew 5:37.

And the cost is not the hours, although it is also the hours. The cost is that your actual work, the thing they asked for, has never been allowed to stand on its own merits. You have been propping up something that was never leaning.

And the extras are now expected, which is not their fault. People get used to what happens. The second time is the same as the first, and by the fourth it is simply what you do.

You are not the reason they come back, the work is, and it has never once needed help. His Spirit is the one who lets a woman see her own work plainly without pulling the kindness out of her, and Matthew 5:37 makes a yes with edges the reliable kind rather than the cold kind.

Do the agreed thing

So here is the exercise, and it is one job long.

Do what was agreed. Do it well. Then stop, and hand it over, and do not add the other bit.

You are able to stop at the edge of a yes, and stopping there has never once been withholding. Matthew 5:37 sets a plain yes as the whole of what is required, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that stopping possible for a woman whose hands keep going.

You will feel it as meanness. Expect that. It is not meanness, it is unfamiliarity, and the two feel identical for about three jobs.

And if they want the other bit, they can ask for it, and then it is a thing with a price on it, and that is a completely ordinary conversation that happens in every trade in the world.

You were never going to disappoint anybody by doing what you said, and you are not going to now. The Spirit of God carries a plain agreement past the urge to over deliver, and the written word calls anything beyond a plain yes unnecessary in Matthew 5:37.