I Stopped Counting The Weeks

Somebody asked how long it had been and you did not know.

That is the moment this article is about. Not the machine. The four or five seconds in a doorway where a perfectly ordinary question arrived and there was no answer available, and a rough guess had to be assembled out of what else had happened that month.

Nine weeks, it turned out. Possibly ten.

And the reason it was not known is not carelessness. It is that the counting stopped somewhere around week four, and the counting stopped because the arrangement stopped being an emergency and became simply what happens in this house.

There is a plastic tub in the bathroom now and it lives there. There is a routine on a Thursday. Nobody in this house says anything about any of it anymore.

And when you worked out that it was nine weeks, something uncomfortable arrived with the number.

It was not about the machine. It was: what else have I stopped noticing.

You are a household in a long stretch and not a household that gave up, and a temporary arrangement that lasted has never once been a household letting itself go.

Whether it were two days, or a month, or a year

There is a passage in Numbers that is almost entirely bookkeeping, and the bookkeeping is the point of it.

Or whether it were two days, or a month, or a year, that the cloud tarried upon the tabernacle, remaining thereon, the children of Israel abode in their tents, and journeyed not. (Numbers 9:22, King James Version)

Two days, or a month, or a year.

The verse lists the lengths, plainly, side by side, with nothing between them. It does not call the year a trial and the two days a mercy. It records the lengths as facts of equal standing, and then it says what the people did, which was stay.

You are inside a stretch whose length is a fact rather than a verdict, and nine weeks in a difficult arrangement has never once been a longer sentence than two days was. Numbers 9:22 sets the lengths beside one another without ranking them, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a man working out a number in a doorway.

And notice what the people are described as doing.

They abode in their tents. They stayed and they lived. There is no suggestion that they lived provisionally, or held their breath, or kept everything packed in case it moved tomorrow.

The cloud was the signal and they arranged their actual life around what the cloud was actually doing, rather than around what they hoped it would do.

You have been living an actual life inside a stretch rather than waiting beside one, and a household that settled into an arrangement has never once been a household that stopped caring. The written word describes people abiding rather than hovering, and the Spirit of God is the one present in the middle of a long stay.

And there is one more thing, and it is the reason this verse rather than a psalm.

It is written down. Somebody kept the record. The lengths were noticed and counted and set down, not anxiously, but accurately, so that afterward there was an account of what had happened.

You are permitted to keep an accurate count without it being a worry, and a date written on a calendar has never once been the same thing as a man fretting about it. Numbers 9:22 keeps the record plainly, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a household know the number without being frightened by it.

Not noticing is not the same as not minding

Something practical, and it is about the uncomfortable thought that arrived with the number.

Not noticing is what human beings do with anything that lasts. It is called adaptation and it is not a character flaw. It is the same mechanism that lets somebody live next to a railway line, and it is the reason a household survives nine weeks of anything at all.

Without it, week nine would feel exactly like week one, and no household on earth could sustain that.

You have a mind that adapts and that adaptation is what got this household through, and a man who stopped counting has never once been a man who stopped caring. The written word records long stretches without alarm, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a mercy from being read as a failure.

Now the second thing, which is the actual risk and is worth naming honestly.

Adaptation is a mercy while a thing is genuinely unresolvable, and it becomes a problem when the thing becomes solvable and nobody notices that it has.

Nine weeks ago there may have been no way forward. There may be one now. The month has changed, or something has come in, or a person has offered, and none of that will get acted on if the arrangement has gone invisible.

You are able to look at this once on purpose, and an arrangement examined deliberately has never once been an arrangement that was going to look after itself. Numbers 9:22 has people watching the cloud attentively rather than assuming it stayed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets a man to look up once.

So write the date. Both dates, actually, on the calendar where the household can see them.

That is not a reproach and it is not a countdown. It is a record, and a record is what lets a person look at a thing once a month and ask whether anything has changed, without having to think about it every day in between.