I Think The Good Years Are Behind Us

You have decided the good years were the ones when they were small.

Not out loud. It is a settled background fact, the way a person knows which part of a road was the pretty bit.

Five, seven, nine. Everybody in one house, nobody with anywhere else to be, and a particular kind of noise in the kitchen that has not been in it for a while.

And now they are fourteen and sixteen and out a lot and it is quieter, and somewhere in you the assessment has already been made and filed.

Here is what I want to put next to that, and it is not a comforting sentence about how the best is yet to come.

You did not know those were the good years while you were in them. You were tired. You were counting the hours until bedtime. And a woman in 2019 could not have told you that she was in the good part.

Which means the assessment you are making now, about this year, is being made by exactly the same person using exactly the same instrument that got it wrong last time.

Though thy beginning was small

There is a line in Job spoken by somebody trying to be helpful, and the shape of it is worth having even though the man saying it does not fully understand the situation.

Though thy beginning was small, yet thy latter end should greatly increase. (Job 8:7, King James Version)

Two ends of a life set against each other, and the direction of travel in the sentence is forward.

The beginning was small. The latter end increases. Whatever else Bildad gets wrong in that book, the shape he describes is the shape Scripture keeps using.

You are a woman standing in one of them, and a year that felt ordinary from inside has never once been a year that was not good. Job 8:7 puts the increase at the latter end rather than at the start, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can hand a woman that without any promise about how anything turns out.

And notice the word small at the front.

The beginning is not described as golden or as the best part. It is described as small, which is what a beginning is, and nobody in that sentence is being told to look back at it fondly.

You have been calling something small the best part, and a season that was hard while you were in it has never once been the peak of anything. The Spirit of God is the one who reorders a person's account of their own life, and it is written in Job 8 that the beginning was small and the latter end is where the increase sits.

And here is the honest thing about those early years, which you know and do not say.

They were exhausting. There were weeks you could not have described as good by any measure available to you at the time.

They have become the good years because they are finished and because the difficulty has fallen off them, which is what happens to every year eventually, including this one.

You are able to see what memory has done to a season, and a year that got easier once it was over has never once been the year it feels like now. It is written that the latter end should greatly increase, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman look at her own account honestly.

The instrument is the problem

Now the practical part, and it is about the assessment rather than about the years.

Nobody can grade a year from inside it. That is not a personal failing and it is not a lack of gratitude.

A year gets graded by what it produces, and what a year produces is not visible until several years later, which is why every single person on earth is wrong about the year they are currently in.

You have been running a judgment nobody is equipped to run, and a verdict on the present year has never once been a verdict anybody could give. The Spirit of God is the one who names a limit rather than a fault, and Job 8:7 speaks about a latter end that nobody in the middle of it could have described.

And there is something specific about this year that you cannot see and I can name.

They are fourteen and sixteen and they still live here. They still come into rooms. They still say things at tables. In about four years that will be different, and this year will be the one somebody remembers.

That is not urgency and I am not telling you the clock is running out. It is simply that this year is being made into something while you are grading it as the after part of something else.

You are inside something being made, and a quiet year has never once been the leftover of a louder one. It is written in Job 8 that the increase belongs to the latter end, and the Holy Spirit is the one at work in a year that nobody has been able to see.

And there is the thing this assessment has been quietly doing, which is the reason to put it down.

A woman who believes the good part is over does the ordinary things at half strength, because they are the after part rather than the thing itself. That is a real cost and it is happening now.

You have been giving a good year the effort of an afterward, and a settled conclusion has never once been the same thing as a fact. The Spirit of God is the one who takes an unexamined verdict off somebody, and Scripture puts the increase at the end rather than at the start.

Do the thing that belongs to this year

Here is the instruction and it is aimed at the facing.

Do the thing tonight that belongs to this year rather than the one that belonged to a past one.

Not the thing you did when they were seven. That thing is finished and trying to run it now is what makes an evening feel like an echo.

You are able to do the thing that fits this house tonight, and an evening built for the people who are actually here has never once been a lesser evening than a remembered one. The Holy Spirit is the one at work in something that fits the present, and Job 8:7 faces forward rather than back.

And it will be quieter, and that is not a downgrade.

A fourteen year old and a sixteen year old at a table produce a different sound than a five year old and a seven year old. Less noise and more that is actually being said, and the second one is not the poor relation of the first.

You have something available now that was not available then, and a quiet table has never once been a smaller table than a loud one. The Spirit of God is the one who is present at a table with two teenagers at it, and it is written that the latter end increases rather than diminishes.

And do it facing the right way, which is the whole of the instruction.

Not as a memorial to something. Not as the reduced version of what used to happen. As the thing this household does now, which is its own thing, and which somebody will describe in fifteen years as the good years.

You are able to turn around inside your own kitchen, and one evening done facing forward has never once been an evening that was about the past. It is written in Job 8 that though the beginning was small, the latter end should greatly increase, and the Spirit of God is the one at work in a year nobody has graded yet.