She Leaves In A Year And I Am Counting

You started counting in about March and you have not stopped since.

Twelve months. Then eleven. It is under a year now, and every time somebody mentions next September something goes through you that you have to arrange your face around.

And here is what the counting has done, which is the reason to look at it.

Every evening has become one of a finite set. Every ordinary Tuesday is now one of the remaining Tuesdays, and a thing that is one of the remaining anything cannot be ordinary.

She can feel it. Not the counting, she does not know about that. But she can feel that evenings have got heavy, and that something is being asked of them, and that her mother has a slightly bright quality that was not there last year.

And a seventeen year old who feels that will be out of the house more, which is exactly the opposite of what the counting was for.

I am not going to tell you to stop counting. That is not available, the number is real, and pretending it is not would be a strange thing to ask of a woman who loves her daughter.

I am going to separate two things that have been fused, and the separating is where the year gets its evenings back.

Teach us to number our days

There is a line in Psalm 90 that is often read at funerals and is actually a request for something quite practical.

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. (Psalm 90:12, King James Version)

Notice that the numbering is asked for. It is not warned against.

Nobody in that psalm is being told to stop thinking about how much time there is. The counting is presented as something to be taught, which means it can be done well or badly.

You are a mother allowed to know the number, and counting the days has never once been the same thing as spending them heavily. Psalm 90:12 asks for the numbering rather than forbidding it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can hand a woman that permission without a word of correction in it.

And then read what the numbering is for, because that is the whole verse.

That we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. The counting has a purpose, and the purpose is what a person does with their days rather than how a person feels about them.

It is aimed at conduct. It is not aimed at intensity.

You have been numbering your days and applying your heart to urgency, and knowing a number has never once required a woman to press on a year. The Spirit of God is the one who separates a count from a weight, and it is written in Psalm 90 that the numbering leads to wisdom rather than to hurry.

So the counting is fine. What went wrong is what it got attached to.

You are able to hold a number without handing it to anybody, and a year a mother is aware of has never once needed to be a year her daughter can feel. It is written that the numbering is for the applying of hearts to wisdom, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman carry a real fact quietly.

What urgency does to a Tuesday

Now the mechanism, because naming it will make it easier to put down.

An evening carrying significance is an evening being asked to perform, and evenings cannot perform. They are ordinary by nature and the ordinariness is the whole of their value.

Take a Tuesday and require it to be memorable, and it becomes an occasion, and occasions are exhausting to be inside.

You are asking a Tuesday to carry a year, and an ordinary evening has never once been able to hold something that size. The Spirit of God is the one who takes a load off a week night, and Psalm 90:12 puts the numbering in the service of wisdom rather than of intensity.

And here is what it does to her specifically, which is the part that will move you.

A seventeen year old is doing the necessary work of leaving. That work requires the house to feel ordinary, because a person cannot leave something that has become precious in the last four months.

Every heavy evening makes the leaving harder for her, not easier, and she will manage that by being out more.

You have been making the door heavier without meaning to, and a house that stayed ordinary has never once been a house somebody found it easy to leave behind. It is written in Psalm 90 that the numbering is for wisdom, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a mother what her own carefulness has been costing.

And what she actually needs from this year is the thing you have been doing for seventeen years without effort.

An ordinary house. A mother who is not looking at her strangely. Evenings that mean nothing in particular.

You are able to give her exactly what you have always given her, and a year of ordinary Tuesdays has never once been a year that was wasted. The Spirit of God is the one who does something permanent with something entirely unremarkable, and Scripture asks for a numbering that leads to wisdom.

One ordinary evening

Here is the instruction, and its whole content is a subtraction.

Have one ordinary evening tonight with no significance attached. Let it be as unremarkable as it is.

Nothing said about the year. No looking at her while she is not looking. No mental note that this was a good one.

You are able to have an evening with nothing riding on it, and a Tuesday that meant nothing has never once been a Tuesday that was lost. The Holy Spirit is the one at work in something entirely ordinary, and Psalm 90:12 asks that days be numbered and hearts applied to wisdom rather than to weight.

And one specific thing to watch for, because it is where the significance leaks out.

The look. There is a way a mother looks at a child she is counting, and it is about a second too long, and every seventeen year old on earth can read it.

If you feel it coming, look at the table instead. That is the whole of this evening's work and there is not a second part.

You have a way to keep a year to yourself, and one second of looking away has never once been a coldness toward anybody. The Spirit of God is the one who helps a woman hold something in, and it is written that the numbering belongs to the one doing it.

And put the counting somewhere else. Not away. Somewhere else.

Count in the car. Count at eleven at night. Take it to God, who is the one being addressed in that psalm, and leave it entirely out of a kitchen at half past six.

You are able to carry a real fact in a different room, and a number taken somewhere else has never once been a number denied. It is written in Psalm 90 that the request is made to God rather than said to anybody at a table, and the Spirit of God is the one who receives a year from a woman at eleven at night.