I Keep The List In My Head

It is not written anywhere.

Not on a phone, not on a pad, not on the back of anything. The whole of it lives in one place, and that place goes to work with you and to the store with you and to bed with you, because it is your head.

And here is what follows from that, mechanically.

A thing that is only held in a mind has to be held continuously. There is no other way to keep it. Paper holds a thing whether or not anybody is thinking about it, and a mind holds a thing only while it is holding it, which means all of the time.

So you have been carrying seventeen items, everywhere, every hour, for about two years. Not thinking about them constantly. Holding them constantly, which is different and quieter and much more expensive.

And nobody has ever suggested otherwise, because a person who keeps things in their head is called organized, and being called organized is pleasant enough that nobody looks at what it costs.

You are a woman carrying a whole house in her head, and a list nobody ever wrote down has never once been a list anybody could put down.

Cast thy burden upon the LORD

There is a line in the fifty fifth psalm about a burden, and the verb it uses is a physical one.

Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved. (Psalm 55:22, King James Version)

Cast thy burden.

Cast is a throwing word. It is what you do with a net or a stone. It is not a word about attitude, and it is not describing a state of mind that somebody arrives at gradually by trying to feel better.

It is a transfer. Something moves from one place to another and is then in the other place rather than in the first one.

You have an instruction to move something rather than to feel differently about it, and casting a burden has never once been the same as deciding to be at peace about it. Psalm 55:22 uses a word about throwing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a real transfer rather than a mood.

And notice what is promised on the other side of it. He shall sustain thee.

Thee. Not the burden. The promise is about holding the person up, which is a different thing from the list being carried for you, and I am not going to tell you that verse means your jobs get done.

You were promised sustaining rather than a cleared list, and a person being held up has never once been the same as a house being finished. The Spirit of God is the one who sustains, and the written word puts thee in that clause rather than putting the burden in it.

A mind is a terrible place to keep a list

So here is the practical claim, and it is engineering rather than psychology.

Written things stay written with no effort. A list on a page requires nothing from anybody between the writing and the reading. It sits there, at zero cost, for as long as it takes.

A list in a head is different. It survives only by being rehearsed, and rehearsal is not free, and the cost is paid continuously, and it is paid at every hour of the day including the ones spent doing something else entirely.

You have been paying a continuous cost for a storage arrangement nobody chose, and a list held in a mind has never once been able to be set down. Psalm 55:22 asks for a transfer rather than an adjustment, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes the moving of a thing possible.

And here is why it has never been written down, and it is not disorganization.

Writing it means seeing it all at once, in one place, in a single column with a number of items in it. And the number is the thing being avoided, because as long as it is unwritten it is a vague many and a vague many is easier to hold than a specific seventeen.

You have a number in that house that has never once been faced, and a vague many has never once been smaller than the figure it is standing in for. The Spirit of God is the one present while a true number gets written down, and Psalm 55:22 asks for the burden to be moved rather than made lighter first.

And one more, and it is where the relief actually sits. The page can be carried instead.

You have a pocket that can hold what your head has been holding, and a page carried around has never once weighed what a rehearsal weighs. Psalm 55:22 is about a transfer, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ordinary piece of paper a real place to put something down.

One page, and carry the page

Here is the assignment and it is about twelve minutes.

Write the whole list on one page tonight.

All of it. The big things and the small ones and the ones that have been in there so long they no longer announce themselves. Sit down with a cup of something and empty it out.

You have twelve minutes and one page tonight, and writing a list down has never once obliged anybody to do a single item on it. Psalm 55:22 asks for the burden to be cast rather than solved, and the Holy Spirit is the one at that table while a woman empties her own head.

You will think you are finished and then three more will arrive. Let them arrive. Keep writing until the arrivals stop, which usually takes longer than the first pass did.

Then here is the second half, and it is what turns this from an exercise into a transfer.

Carry the page. Fold it and put it in a bag, a pocket, a purse. Wherever you go for the next few days, the page goes.

Here is why. The reason the list has stayed in your head is that your head was the only thing that goes everywhere. Give the page the same property and the head is no longer required, and the rehearsal stops, and it stops without anybody having to decide to stop rehearsing.

And when something new arrives, write it on the page instead of holding it. That is the whole of the practice.