It Was Going To Be Six Weeks

The boxes in the back room have not been opened, and the machine in the kitchen has been making that noise since March and nobody has rung about it.

That is the thing to start with, because it is the clearest evidence and because it has stopped being visible. Four boxes, two years, and nobody has needed anything out of them in that whole time, which tells you something about what is in them and also about what has been happening here.

They are not opened because opening them would be settling in.

And settling in was not the plan. The plan was six weeks. Then it was the spring. Then it was after the thing in September, and then somewhere in there it stopped having a date attached at all and simply carried on.

And in the meantime nothing has gone on the walls. The curtains are the ones that came with it. There is a light fitting in the hall that has been wrong since the first week and has never been changed because changing it would be an admission.

You are living in this house rather than waiting out a stretch in it, and a temporary arrangement that lasted two years has never once been two years that did not count.

My times are in thy hand

There is a line in the psalms about duration, and it puts the length of things somewhere very specific.

But I trusted in thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my God. My times are in thy hand. (Psalm 31:15, King James Version)

My times are in thy hand.

Times, plural. Not my life as one span, but the stretches inside it. The seasons, the arrangements, the periods that have a beginning and an end that nobody can see from inside them.

And they are in His hand, which means the duration of this one is not something you failed to predict. It was never yours to predict.

You are inside a stretch whose length was never yours to set, and a period that ran longer than anybody planned has never once been a planning failure. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman looking at four unopened boxes, and Psalm 31:15 puts the times in God's hand rather than in anybody's diary.

And notice what the man says just before it.

I trusted in thee. I said, Thou art my God. The line about the times comes after a decision has already been made about who is holding them, and that ordering matters.

He is not working out how long anything will be. He is settling who is in charge of the length and then getting on with living inside it.

You are able to settle who holds the length and then live inside it, and a woman who stops trying to date the end of this has never once been a woman who gave up on it changing. The written word puts the trusting before the times, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds a stretch while somebody lives in it.

And there is something quietly freeing in the plural.

My times. There will be others. This one is one of several, which means it is not the whole of a life and it is not the final arrangement, and treating it as an interruption to the real thing is the one reading the plural rules out.

You are in one of several and not in a detour from the real one, and a stretch that is one of many has never once been the interruption it felt like from inside. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a season from being read as a whole life, and Psalm 31:15 makes the times plural on purpose.

Two years is not a stopover

Something practical, and it is about the arithmetic of what has actually been lived here.

Two years is about seven hundred days. Seven hundred breakfasts. Two Christmases. A birthday for everybody in the house, twice. Somebody learned to read in this house. Somebody had the worst week of their year in this house and got through it in this house.

None of that was provisional. All of it happened here, in these rooms, and it counted at the time and it counts now.

You have lived seven hundred real days in these rooms, and a stretch that was supposed to be shorter has never once been a stretch that did not happen. The written word puts the length in God's hand and never calls any of it provisional, and the Spirit of God is the one present in the days themselves rather than only in the destination.

Now the thing to actually do, and it is one object and it is deliberately small.

Do one thing in this house tonight that only makes sense for somebody who is staying.

Put a picture on a wall. Change the light fitting in the hall. Open one box and put what is in it somewhere it can be seen.

Not all of it. One thing, chosen precisely because it would be silly to do it for six weeks.

You are able to do one thing tonight that assumes you are here, and a picture put on a wall has never once been a promise about how long anybody stays. The Holy Spirit is the one in the hall while a nail goes in, and Psalm 31:15 puts the times in God's hand rather than in a decision about furniture.

And it does not mean you are giving up on moving. That is the fear underneath the boxes and it is worth saying plainly. Hanging a picture is not a decision about the future. It is a decision about tonight, and tonight is the only night anybody actually gets to furnish.