The scorecard nobody asked me to keep

Last week I was in the kitchen doing what felt like absolutely everything.

Cooking. Cleaning. Wiping counters. Loading the dishwasher, again. Circling the house like a one-woman cleaning service while everyone else just sat there, doing their own thing.

And I started muttering under my breath.

Nothing out loud, but just that low, simmering kind of talk. The kind where you're not technically saying anything, but your body language is saying all of it. Dishes clanging a little too hard. Sighs a little too heavy. Eyes that could level a room.

And then I caught it.

I knew exactly what I was doing. I was sliding into martyr mode.

Nobody asked me to carry all of that. Nobody told me to take it on and then simmer about it in silence. I'd picked it up myself, said nothing, and was quietly building a case against every person in that house.

That's the sneaky thing about a martyr spirit. From the outside, it can look so much like faithfulness. Like endurance and selflessness and strength. But on the inside, someone is keeping a scorecard, and resentment is doing the bookkeeping.