The Reliable One

Can I tell you something I don't say out loud very often?

Sometimes I don't want to be the adult. I want to be the one who forgets. Who drops the ball. Who says "I don't know, figure it out" and actually means it. I want to be, just once, the one who gets to fall apart a little while someone else holds things steady.

But that's not really on the menu for women like us, is it?

Somewhere along the way, and I suspect it happened quietly, without a formal announcement, being reliable became part of my faith. Not separate from it. Part of it. Good Christian women serve. They show up. They don't complain about the weight because complaining about the weight means you're not grateful for the opportunity to carry it.

And so we carry it.

And then someone notices we're good at carrying it, so they add a little more. And we carry that too. Because we're faithful. Because we're capable. Because who else is going to do it?

And the pile just keeps growing, and we keep saying yes, and somewhere underneath all of it is a woman who is absolutely exhausted but has no idea how to put any of it down without feeling like she's failing God.

Sound familiar?

I was reading Exodus 18 recently. Moses is sitting from morning until evening, every day, hearing disputes, solving problems, holding the weight of an entire nation's daily life. And honestly? It looks admirable. Devoted. Exactly what a good leader does.

 Then Jethro, his father-in-law, watches for exactly one day and says:

"What you are doing is not good… you will certainly wear yourself out."

He doesn't question Moses' heart. He doesn't call him proud or foolish. He just looks at the structure of things with fresh eyes and says this arrangement will break you.

The work wasn't wrong. The burden was.

And the burden had been organized, quietly and incrementally, in a way that required one person to hold what was never meant for one person to hold.

I read that and sat very still for a minute. Because if I had understood that passage the way I understand it now, years ago, I might not have burned through careers the way I did. I kept calling it faithfulness. It was something else entirely.

Nobody told Moses to set things up this way. He didn't write it down as a goal. It just accumulated. The way it does. The way it always does for women who are competent and faithful and just a little too good at holding things together.

Competence becomes availability. Availability becomes expectation.

Expectation becomes identity. And one day you realize you're not just doing the reliable one. You are the reliable one. And you're not entirely sure who you are without it.

There is something the body knows before the head catches up. A low hum that does not turn off even when the afternoon is finally quiet. Not quite anxiety. Not quite peace. Just a restlessness that has been running so long you stopped noticing it was there. Waiting for something to need you. Not sure what happens to you if nothing does.

If everything flows through you, what do you imagine actually happens if it doesn't?

That question is worth sitting with longer than feels comfortable.

If you want to go a little deeper, here are a few coaching reflections worth sitting with. Pick the one that lands.

When did being reliable stop being something you do and start being something you are?

What did your faith teach you, explicitly or quietly, about what a good woman carries?

If you stepped back from something you're currently holding, what is the real fear underneath that?

Faithfulness and indispensability are not the same thing. Most of us know that in our heads. The harder, slower work is finding where we stopped believing it in our bones.

You're not failing God by putting something down. 

That might be worth saying to yourself a few times this week.