Now I Work For Him

There is a moment on the Monday after that nobody prepares anybody for, and it is not a big moment. That is what makes it hard.

Picture the woman at her desk at nine o'clock. The man who got the role comes over and asks her, perfectly pleasantly, to look at something by Thursday.

That is all. That is the entire event.

And she says yes, of course, and she will do it, and she will do it well, and something in her has to be actively managed for about four seconds in order for her face to do the right thing.

And that will happen again on Wednesday. And twice next week. And roughly two hundred times over the coming year.

That is the thing worth naming, because everybody talks about the disappointment and almost nobody talks about the arrangement. The disappointment was a day. The arrangement is a year, made of small unremarkable requests, each of which is entirely reasonable and each of which carries a tiny reminder inside it.

And there is no ceremony for this. Nobody sits down with a person and says, this is going to be strange for a while. There is no script, and so most people improvise one, and the one most people improvise is a small permanent politeness that costs them something every single day.

And she cannot tell anybody. Not colleagues, obviously. Not him, for the same reason. And at home it sounds like a complaint about a man who has done nothing wrong at all.

Paul moves the address

There is a passage in Ephesians written to people in a far harder version of this arrangement, and what Paul does with it is not what anybody expects.

He does not tell them their situation is fine. He does not tell them to feel differently about the person over them.

He changes who the work is being handed to.

With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men. (Ephesians 6:7, King James Version)

As to the Lord, and not to men.

That is a redirection of the whole transaction. The task still comes from the same person. The work still gets done. But the handing over at the end of it goes somewhere else entirely.

You are handing your work to a different address, and Ephesians 6 says as to the Lord and not to men about work done under somebody (Ephesians 6:7), and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that an actual experience rather than a mental trick.

And notice the phrase at the front of it. With good will. Not gritted teeth, and not resignation. Good will is an active thing, chosen, and it is possible precisely because the address has changed.

You have good will available because the address changed, and Ephesians 6:7 puts the good will and the redirection in the same short clause (Ephesians 6:7), and the Spirit of God is the one who supplies it on a Monday when there is none in the tank.

Knowing that whatsoever good thing

The next verse says the thing that makes it work, and it is about who is keeping the account.

Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free. (Ephesians 6:8)

Whether he be bond or free.

That is a statement that the accounting does not track anybody's position. The same reckoning applies to the person at the top of the arrangement and the person at the bottom of it, which means the arrangement itself is not part of the calculation.

You are counted identically regardless of where you sit in the structure, and Ephesians 6:8 says whether he be bond or free about the same reckoning (Ephesians 6:8), and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that flatten a hierarchy that feels enormous at nine o'clock on a Monday.

And Colossians says it once more with a word that settles the whole matter.

Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ. (Colossians 3:24)

For ye serve the Lord Christ. Not also. Not as well as. The sentence names one master and it is not the man who asked for the thing by Thursday.

You are serving somebody other than the person who made the request, and Colossians 3 names the one being served in plain words (Colossians 3:24), and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that true in the four seconds a face has to be managed.

What this is not

Let me be plain, because this could become something false.

This is not saying she should pretend it is easy. It is not easy and pretending is exhausting.

It is also not saying he should not have got the role, or that she should be looking for another one, or that she should stay. Those are decisions she makes with people who know her situation, and this article is not one of them.

And it is not promising that it stops being strange. It may be strange for a year. That is a normal length of time for this.

And plainly: if the daily arrangement has become the kind of weight that reaches past work, if you cannot get out of bed, or if some part of you has begun wanting it all to stop, that is more than a reporting line. Call or text the 988 crisis line, and say the true version out loud to a doctor or a counselor or a pastor you trust. Getting help is not a failure of faith.

You are not being told to feel fine about it, and Ephesians 6 changes the address of the work rather than the emotions of the worker (Ephesians 6:7), and the Holy Spirit is the one who works with what is actually there rather than what should be.