The car needed doing and you did it. The school thing needed a form and you did the form. His mother's appointment got moved and you were the one who noticed.
None of that is a complaint. Every household needs somebody who does those things, and in yours it is you, and it has been you for a long while now. It is also, quietly, how a promise gets kept in an ordinary week.
What is new is the question. It arrived about eight months ago and it will not leave.
Am I being faithful, or am I being used?
And you have never said it out loud, because saying it makes you a certain kind of woman in your own ears, and you do not want to be that woman.
Before we go on, and this comes first on this row and does not get moved for anybody.
If the person you live with frightens you, controls you, hurts you, or has made you smaller and more afraid than you used to be, then none of what follows applies to your situation and I am not going to dress it up in the language of promises. That is not faithfulness. Nobody who cares about you would tell you to keep absorbing it. Talk to somebody qualified where you live, this week, and if there is danger in that house, contact an emergency service or a domestic violence line today.
For everybody else, and it is most people who arrive here: let us give that question a proper hearing, because it deserves one.
God sets the solitary in families
There is a short line in Psalm 68 that is usually read as being about orphans and widows, and I want a different edge of it.
God setteth the solitary in families (Psalm 68:6, King James Version)
The solitary. A person who is on their own, whether or not there are people in the building.
That is worth stopping on. It is entirely possible to be solitary in a full house. In fact, a full house is one of the more efficient ways for a person to become solitary, because everybody assumes somebody else has noticed.
You are solitary in a house with people in it, and Psalm 68 has never once required an empty room for that word to apply. Psalm 68:6 has God set the solitary in families as a deliberate act, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a description a woman recognizes rather than a doctrine she agrees with.
And notice the verb. God does the setting. He puts solitary people into company. That is presented as something He actively does, which means being solitary is a condition He moves people out of rather than one He leaves them in.
You have been solitary and it has never once been a condition God leaves standing, and the word puts the moving of it in His hands. The passage names the setting as a divine act, and the Spirit of God is the one who is currently doing it whether or not it looks like anything yet.
An honest answer to a hard question
Now let me answer the question properly, because you asked it honestly and it deserves better than reassurance.
Faithful and used are not opposites. That is the first thing, and it is the thing nobody says.
A person can be genuinely faithful and can also be carrying more than any one person should. Both of those are true in a great many households and neither one cancels the other. Loyalty does not stop being loyalty because it has become unbalanced, and an unbalanced load does not become fair because the person carrying it is loyal.
Which means you do not have to choose an answer. You are allowed to hold both, and holding both is more honest than either one on its own.
You are able to be faithful and overloaded at the same time, and no verse has ever once made those two into a choice. Psalm 68:6 has God move the solitary into company without any judgment on how they came to be solitary, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman stop trying to pick a side against herself.
You were keeping a real promise all along, and the question about the load has never once been disloyalty. It is written that God sets the solitary in families, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present with somebody who has finally asked an honest question about her own house.
Tell one person, and say the question
Here is the assignment and there is something specific to say in it.
Tell one person the truth about how alone this has been. And when you do, say the question out loud: I do not know whether I am being faithful or being used.
Say the question, not an answer. You do not have to have resolved it and you probably will not resolve it this year.
One person, chosen because they can hear a hard sentence without flinching and without instructing you. A friend of long standing. A pastor, if that is a safe person in your case. A counselor.
You are permitted to say the question out loud to another human being, and asking it has never once made you a certain kind of woman. Psalm 68:6 has God set solitary people into company, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present the first time a hard question leaves somebody's mouth.
Here is what I believe is going out over somebody this afternoon.
You are not a certain kind of woman for asking an honest question, and eight months of holding it in has never once been what loyalty required. Psalm 68:6 says God setteth the solitary in families, and it is the Holy Spirit, not my telling you, who moves a solitary person into company while she is still working out the answer.
And this, which is what I came with.
You are faithful and carrying too much at the same time, and neither of those has ever once made the other one false. The word puts the setting of the solitary into families in God's own hands, and the same Spirit who moved that psalm is standing on the step with you.
Tell one person. Say the question.
Declare this over yourself
- Question of whether I am being used, you were never a disloyal thought. Psalm 68:6 says God setteth the solitary in families, so by the Holy Spirit I say you out loud this week, in the name of Jesus.
- Category of woman I invented and refused to join, you have no standing in this house. The word moves solitary people into company without weighing how they came to be solitary, and by the Spirit of God I am finished silencing an honest question about my own decisions.
- Father, You set solitary people into families and You do it deliberately, and I have been solitary in a full house. Your word says God setteth the solitary in families, so by Your Spirit I tell one trusted person the truth about how alone this has been.
Psalm 68:6
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