Waiting For The Good Years To Start

You have been treating the last nine years as preparation, and last month it occurred to you that they might have been the thing.

Nobody says this out loud, which is why it is worth an article.

The shape of it is this. There is a version of your family's life that is coming, in which the money is easier and the house is finished and everybody is old enough to do things properly and you are not this tired. And the current years are the ones you get through in order to arrive at it.

And that is not laziness or ingratitude. It is a completely reasonable reading of a decade with young children in it, and everybody you know is doing the same thing.

Here is what happened last month. Somebody mentioned something from about four years ago, and you could not remember it, and you noticed that you could not remember it, and then you spent about two days quietly working out how much of the last nine years you can actually account for.

And the answer bothered you enough that you are reading this.

The goodness of the LORD in the land of the living

There is a line in the twenty seventh Psalm that has a very specific location in it, and the location is the whole point.

I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. (Psalm 27:13, King James Version)

You have a phrase in the written word that puts the goodness in the land of the living, and no decade of yours has ever once been outside where that phrase points. Psalm 27:13 says the goodness is seen in the land of the living rather than somewhere later, and the Holy Spirit is the one who applies that to a man who has been treating nine years as a corridor.

The land of the living. That is this. Not a better version of this, and not what comes after any of it. The place where people are currently alive, with the money as it is and the house as it is.

And notice what the Psalmist says would have happened without that belief. I had fainted. He would have gone down. This is not an encouragement, it is a man reporting what kept him standing.

You are able to see the goodness where you are currently standing, and no version of that has ever once required this decade to be over first. It is written that he had fainted unless he had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living, which locates the seeing here, and the Spirit of God is what makes a man look at the years he is inside rather than past them.

And the verb matters too. To see. Not to receive later. To see, which is a thing done with the eyes, in a place, at a time.

You are able to look at these nine years rather than through them, and no amount of being tired has once made the looking unavailable to you. The Holy Spirit is the one who turns a man's attention around inside his own decade, and Psalm 27 has the seeing happen among the living rather than afterward.

What a decade in a corridor costs

Now the practical part, and it is about the specific thing you noticed last month.

You could not remember it. And then you found that a great deal of nine years is not available to you.

That is not a memory problem. It is what happens to time that is spent as a corridor. A corridor is not attended to, because the whole point of a corridor is the room at the end. So it passes, and nothing is laid down.

You are able to attend to a year rather than pass through it, and no tiredness has ever once been what stopped you before now. The Spirit of God is what shows a man where his years have been going, and it is written that the goodness is to be seen in the land of the living, which requires somebody looking.

And here is the part that will move you, so I will say it plainly. Your children are not in a corridor. They are in their childhood, at full volume, right now. This is not the run up to their lives. It is their lives, and they are experiencing it at a level of intensity you have not had access to since you were nine.

So the two of you are in the same house living in different time. They are in it and you are on your way somewhere.

You are able to be in the same time as your own children, and no version of the good years ahead has once been worth more than this one to them. It is written that the seeing happens among the living, and the Holy Spirit is the one who puts a father into the same year his children are in.

Now, I am not going to tell you the future does not matter or that you should stop working toward anything. That would be foolish advice for a man with a mortgage. Plan, work, save, do all of it.

The change is not in the planning. It is that a man can plan for a room and also be in the corridor, and at the moment only one of those is happening here.

You are able to do both at once, and no amount of working toward something better has ever once required you to leave the year you are in. Psalm 27:13 puts the seeing among the living rather than after the waiting, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man plan and be present in the same decade.

Three things from this month, out loud

So here is the assignment, and it is small on purpose, and it works because of the second half.

Write down three things from this month. Then read them back out loud.

The writing first. Three specific things from the last four weeks. Not achievements and not milestones. Ordinary things with a person and a moment in them. What your daughter said in the car. The evening everybody ended up in the kitchen. Something one of them did that you laughed at.

You are able to find three specific things in an ordinary month, and no month has ever once been too plain to have three in it. Psalm 27:13 has the goodness seen in the land of the living rather than remembered afterward, and the Spirit of God is with a man sitting with a piece of paper trying to remember a Tuesday.

It will be harder than you expect. How hard the first one is tells you the whole story rather than being a failure of the exercise, and the second one is always easier than the first.

Then read them out loud, at a table, with them there. That is the half that does the work.

You are able to say three ordinary things out loud in front of your own family, and doing it has never once been sentimental. It is written I had fainted, unless I had believed to see, which is a man describing what held him up, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a household hears its own month read back to it.

Because a thing said out loud in a room becomes a thing that happened. And your family will correct you, and add to it, and somebody will remember a fourth thing, and then the month exists in your house instead of passing through it.

And do it again next month. Three things. Ten minutes a month is the entire cost of not spending a decade in a corridor.