The Cost of Carrying Other People’s Homework

Some lessons aren’t yours to learn twice.

There’s a quiet kind of manipulation that doesn’t show up in arguments or power plays.

It shows up in helplessness.

You’ve met it before — maybe at work, maybe at home — the person who “just can’t figure it out.”

The one who sighs dramatically, shrugs, and waits for you to step in.

They’re not confused. They’re strategic.

That’s weaponized incompetence — when someone fakes inability so you’ll take responsibility.

It’s not clumsy; it’s calculated.

And it drains more than your time — it drains your soul.

These people build altars to their own fragility.

They thrive on your empathy, your “I’ve got it, don’t worry.”

They take your strength and use it to reinforce their weakness.

Before long, you’re holding up a system that was never yours to maintain.

The truth is, you can’t rescue someone who refuses to stand.

And ~it’s your job to keep saving them~ — that’s the lie.

God didn’t design you to carry the weight of other people’s willful surrender.

If someone’s incompetence has become your full-time ministry, it’s time to step back.

Show them how. Then leave the space for them to do it.

When they don’t — let silence do the teaching.

Every “I’ll do it” whispered in exhaustion is an unpaid invoice to your own peace.

You are not called to manage dysfunction; you’re called to steward discernment.

And discernment starts with one word: no.

Focus Point:

Sometimes deliverance looks like letting people sit with what they’ve built.