She Came Back In October

She came back in October, and you have not been able to enjoy it for one day.

Six months she was gone. No explanation, no falling out. And then a message in October asking whether you had space, as though nothing had happened, which for her it probably had not.

And you said yes, obviously, and you were glad for about four hours.

Now you work for her with one eye on the door. You look for signs. You read her messages twice. When she was a day late replying last week you had the whole conversation in your head about her going again, and she was on holiday.

I am not going to tell you to trust people more, because that is not a thing anybody can do on command. And I am not going to help you keep her, because that would be strategy and there is none here. I am going to talk about what the watching is costing.

He restoreth my soul

There is a line in the middle of the best known psalm in the world, and it is usually read too fast because everybody already knows it.

Four words. And the verb in them is doing something very specific.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. (Psalm 23:3, King James Version)

You are being restored yourself, and that has never once depended on anybody staying. Psalm 23:3 puts the restoring in God's hands rather than in the circumstances, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to a hallway with coats on the hooks and a bag changing hands.

Restore is a word about something that was depleted. It assumes a loss happened. Nobody restores what was never diminished, so the verse is written for people who have actually lost something.

And the restoring is not described as contingent. It does not say he restoreth my soul when the circumstances improve. It is simply what the shepherd does.

You have a restoring that is already underway, and it has never once been waiting on a customer. The Spirit of God is the one who makes four words from a psalm everybody knows reach a woman standing at her own front door, and Psalm 23:3 puts the restoring into God's hands without naming a condition.

What the watch is costing

Let me say what guarding the door is doing, because it is not wisdom and it is not prudence.

It is an attempt to make the next loss cost less by paying for it in advance. If you are watching, you will see it coming, and if you see it coming it cannot do to you what the last one did. That is the arrangement, and it almost works, which is why people do it.

You were paying in advance for something that may never arrive, and it has never once made a loss cheaper. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman what the watching is buying, and the written word says he restoreth my soul in Psalm 23:3 with no condition attached to it.

And here is what it costs. You are not actually present in the work. Half your attention is on the door, which means the work she is getting is the work of a woman who is half somewhere else, and you know it, and that is its own quiet grief.

It also means the six months she was away are still running. She came back in October and you have not.

You are able to come back into your own present, and coming back has never once required a guarantee. His Spirit is the one who brings a woman's attention home into her own hands, and Psalm 23:3 has the shepherd restoring and leading without asking anybody to secure the field first.

Whole attention, one job

So here is the exercise, and it is one job long.

Do the next piece of work for her with your whole attention. All of it. The way you did in the first year before any of this happened.

You are able to give your whole attention to one job, and giving it has never once been naive. Psalm 23:3 has the restoring done by God and not by an outcome, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a woman's full attention available again after six months of guarding.

And stop watching the door. Concretely: do not read her messages twice. Do not count the days. Do not interpret a late reply. If she goes again, you will find out the way you found out the first time, and no amount of watching will have changed it.

That is not optimism. It is arithmetic. Watching does not prevent anything, it only spends the present.

You were never able to stop it by seeing it coming, and you have never once needed to. The Spirit of God carries a woman past the habit of bracing, and the written word has the restoring of the soul given as simple fact in Psalm 23:3.