The Lease Runs Out In June

There are seven months between tonight and June, and you have already spent them.

Not literally. Nothing has happened. But somewhere in your head those seven months have been reclassified from time into waiting, and once time gets reclassified like that it stops being available.

You know how it shows up. Nothing gets bought and nothing gets arranged and nothing goes anywhere, because what is the point when it all has to come out again in June. The box in the corner stays in the corner. The wall stays the way it was on the first day. The whole apartment is being held in the condition it needs to be in to be left.

I want to say the true thing about the date first, because pretending would be no use.

June is real. It is coming, and it is not moving, and the apartment does have to be emptied. Nothing in this article changes any of that.

What I want to look at is a sentence that has attached itself to the date without anybody agreeing to it.

The sentence is: therefore the time until then does not count.

That was never true, nobody ever said it, and it has been running your life since the day you found out.

My times are in thy hand

There is a line in a psalm about time that puts it somewhere unexpected.

But I trusted in thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my God. My times are in thy hand: deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me. (Psalm 31:14-15, King James Version)

My times. Plural. Not my life, not my future, not my destination. The times. The stretches. The particular seasons a person actually lives through.

You are holding a set of months that Scripture says are in God's hand, and a period with an end date has never once been outside what that verse covers. Psalm 31:15 puts the times in His hand rather than in anybody's calendar, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a young woman counting down.

Now notice where that line sits, because the surroundings matter.

It is said by somebody in trouble, in the middle of a psalm about being hunted. It is not a settled person's observation about how nice it is that God is in charge of the schedule. It is a statement made from inside an unresolved situation with no visible end.

Which means the times being in His hand is not a description of a situation that has worked out. It is a description of a situation that has not.

You have times in God's hand that have not resolved yet, and an unfinished stretch has never once been outside His keeping. The Spirit of God is the one who holds the times of a person who cannot see the end of anything, and it is written in Psalm 31:15 that this was said from inside real trouble.

The months are not the destination

Now the sentence that attached itself to the date, because it is the whole subject.

Nothing that has an ending is a waiting room. That is not how anything works, and if it were, everything would be a waiting room, because everything ends.

Your seven months do not become significant in June. They are seven months. They are the amount of life you are going to have between now and then, and they will be lived either way, and the only question is whether they are lived as time or as a countdown.

You are able to live inside a stretch that ends rather than around it, and a fixed departure has never once made the weeks before it into a corridor. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a stretch of months with a date on the end, and Psalm 31:15 puts the times of a person in God's hand while the trouble is still running.

And here is what makes this urgent, and I mean urgent literally.

This is the age where a lot of things are like this. Short leases. Temporary jobs. Situations that will change. And if the rule is that a stretch does not count when it has an ending, that rule will apply to almost everything for about a decade.

Seven months at a time, for ten years, is most of your twenties spent in a waiting room. Not because anybody was unkind to you. Because of a sentence.

You are able to end a sentence before it runs for a decade, and a rule about time has never once been something a person is stuck with. The Spirit of God is the one who returns a stretch of life to somebody, and it is written in Psalm 31:15 that the times are in His hand in the middle of a situation nobody could see the end of.

And this, plainly, in these words. That apartment is not a report on you. Not on your earning, not on your stage, not on how it compares to anybody else's. A place with a date on it is not a verdict on the person renting it, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way while she is sitting in it in November.

You are a woman whose worth was settled a long way from a lease, and how long somebody has somewhere has never once been a statement about who they are. Psalm 31:15 puts the times in God's hand in Psalm 31, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

One thing, until the day

So here is the assignment, and the second half is the whole of it.

Put one thing you own where you will see it every morning, and leave it there until the day you actually go.

One thing. Yours, meaning something, not functional. Standing on a surface, on the route the morning already takes. Nothing on a wall, nothing marked, nothing that could be a question in June.

That part takes about a minute.

You are putting one thing of yours into a place with a date on it, and an object on a counter has never once needed a longer lease to be worth putting down. The Holy Spirit is the one at work in what a person passes at eight in the morning, and Psalm 31:15 puts the times of a life in God's hand while the end is still unknown.

Now the second half, and this is where the rule breaks.

Leave it there until the day you actually go. Not until May, when the packing starts. Not until it starts to feel silly. Until the actual day, and then it goes in the last box, and it comes out first in the next place.

Because everything in that apartment is currently arranged to make leaving easy. This one object will not be. It will be the one thing that is out, in the open, on an ordinary morning, saying that these seven months were lived in.

And when you carry it out in June, it will not be a thing you have to undo. It will be the first thing you set down in whatever comes next.

You are living inside seven months rather than emptying them out in advance, and one object left standing until the last day has never once made a move harder. The Spirit of God is the one who is with a person through a stretch that ends, and it is written in Psalm 31:15 that the times are in His hand from inside the trouble rather than after it.