He Always Did This Part

It made a noise and you went to find him.

Not consciously. You were two steps into the hall before it caught up, and then you stood in the hall, and that is where this article starts.

Because there are two things happening in that hallway and they are being carried as one thing, and they are not one thing, and they need separating.

The first is small: you do not know what the noise means or what to do about it.

The second is not small at all: the reason you do not know is that for forty one years somebody else did, and the going to find him is still the first thing your body does.

And the second one is what has actually flattened you, and it arrived disguised as a practical problem about a machine, which is how it gets into the house on days when the front door is otherwise well guarded.

You are a woman learning a house and a loss at the same time and not a woman who is failing at either, and a thing you never had to know has never once been a thing you cannot learn now.

Thy Maker is thine husband

There is a sentence in Isaiah that is spoken directly to somebody in this position, and it is startling every time it is read slowly.

For thy Maker is thine husband; the LORD of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel. (Isaiah 54:5, King James Version)

Thy Maker is thine husband.

It is said to a people described in that chapter as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and as a widow, and it does not offer her consolation about the loss. It offers her a relationship in the place where the loss is.

And the word chosen is the ordinary domestic one. Not protector, not provider in the abstract. Husband, which is the word for the person who is in the house, who knows where things are, who is there when something makes a noise at night.

You are being offered presence in the exact place where the absence is, and a verse that names the household relationship has never once been speaking about anything other than the hallway you are standing in. Isaiah 54:5 uses the domestic word on purpose, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody who got two steps into a hall before remembering.

And notice the three names that follow, because they are not decoration.

The LORD of hosts is his name. Hosts is armies. It is the largest possible scale, and it is placed immediately beside the most domestic word in the sentence.

That is the claim: the one at the scale of armies is the one who is in this house, about this noise, tonight.

You have somebody at the scale of armies concerned with a noise in your hallway, and a God named the LORD of hosts has never once been too large for a household detail. The written word sets the domestic word and the vast name side by side, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that true in a house at eleven at night.

And thy Redeemer. A redeemer is the family member who takes responsibility for what a person cannot handle alone. The word is practical and it is legal and it is about somebody stepping in where there is nobody else.

You are not without somebody to step in, and a woman on her own in a house has never once been a woman without a redeemer in the sense that word actually carries. Isaiah 54:5 names the redeeming as a family office, and the Holy Spirit is the one who fills it in an empty hall.

Two things at once, and a card

Something practical, and it is about how to carry two things instead of one.

The knowing and the grieving are separate jobs and they are on completely different timescales.

The knowing is finite. There are perhaps a dozen things in a house that a person needs to know, and each one takes between four and forty minutes to learn, and once learned they stay learned.

The grieving is not finite in that way, and it does not need to be, and nothing in this article is going to hurry it.

You have one job with an end in it and one without, and two things carried at once have never once had to be carried at the same speed. The written word offers a relationship rather than a schedule, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in both of them without hurrying either.

Now the card, which is the practical thing and is smaller than it sounds.

Get a box of index cards, or the backs of envelopes, or anything that can be written on and kept. One card per thing.

Card one, tonight: what the noise is, or where the shutoff is, or the name and number of the person who came last time. Whichever one is in front of you.

Write it plainly enough that a stranger could follow it, because in about two years the person reading it will not remember the evening it was written.

You are building something tonight that will still be here in ten years, and a card written in a kitchen has never once been too small a thing to leave for yourself. Isaiah 54:5 puts the household relationship and the vast name in one sentence, and the Holy Spirit is the one at the table while you write.

And keep the box somewhere obvious. Not tidy. Obvious. The drawer by the door, the shelf in the kitchen, wherever your hand goes first.

You are able to make a record of this house one card at a time, and a box on a shelf has never once been a smaller thing to have than a person who already knew. Isaiah 54:5 names the one who steps in where there is nobody else, and the Holy Spirit is the one in the kitchen while the box fills up.

And when somebody comes to look at something, ask them what they are doing while they do it, and write it on a card afterward. Two years of that and the box is the thing he was.